uTorrent as root...

[rjwaldren]

I'm running uTorrent installed through the one click + wiki guidance for 64-bit. There are a few things that I don't feel comfortable with.

1. utserver is running as root...Is that desired?
2. Downloaded files are root:root and 644

I'm betting that utserver creates files according to the user it's running as and have found some indication of it using a umask of the calling shell rather than something that can be configured independently. But I haven't found any good info on changing to a non-root user yet.

[bigfoot65]

Will have to check that out. The app packager may be able to provide more info. The init script should have it running as apache, but I see it is not set up correctly to do that at the moment.

That may have something to do with the torrents being root user. Have you searched the forums to see if someone has encountered similar behavior?

Keep in mind this is a BETA app, so anticipate it might have some issues. Not to mention it was not designed to run on 64-bit OS, but does appear to work. I am sure running as root is not a major deal, but the torrents being owned by root could cause some problems.

[rjwaldren]

Most of my googling around utserver reveals that Unreal Tounement server apparently runs happily as non-root. Unfortunately I'm not finding much info about the uTorrent server. It seems like the apache user is applied to the Web GUI, but the server is owned by the starting shell, so root in our init case.

uTorrent doesn't seem to provide a command line mechanism to start as another user. So maybe the init script needs to change or possibly xinetd/inetd can handle it.

[bigfoot65]

Agreed. I will leave that to the app packager to sort out for now. The init script has the capability, so it should not be too difficult.

[rjwaldren]

Yeah, it looks like most people out there are creating thier own init scripts for it. The only distro specific one I found so far was for debian. But starting the server using fedoras daemon function allows designating the user:group.

It was good to look into fedoras init script structure, I'm used to debian, so wasn't sure what fedoraisms to even look for.

BTW, I suggest - torrent:users - for the defaults. That's what I'll be using til it's worked out at least.

[DTgreat]

This is now on my radar, will look into it tomorrow morning. I think it was running as root for my quick and dirty initial installation, something was messing with my shares. Shouldn't be too hard to narrow down though!