Startup – How to Run an Application at Startup as a Certain User?

startup

Is there a way to have an application launch during startup under a certain user account?

For example, I would like to have a_small_app run under the user account bob (which is in the group bobsgroup). Do I add something to /etc/init.d?

Note: I don't want the application to start after a user logs in but rather when the computer starts.

Best Answer

A startup system agnostic method. You can use this in /etc/rc.local, a /etc/init.d/... script, an Upstart configuration file and probably a systemd configuration too.

sudo -u oli /full/path/to/application

This command will run as the root user and sudo will drop down to the "oli" user. Obviously change the user and the command for your purposes.

I should add that there are at least a dozen ways of doing just this... But in my experience they're all largely identical in effect. Here's an upstart example using its setuid stanza:

start on (filesystem and stopped udevtrigger)
stop on runlevel [06]

setuid oli
respawn

exec /full/path/to/application
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