Bug 30552 – bitlbee should not be run as root

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED TEST-REQUEST

[Description delete this account 2003-10-07 04:25:04 UTC]

Bitlbee should not need to run as root. Bitlbee does not benefit from root 
priviledges in any way. Now that Gentoo has an init script for bitlbee it 
should be altered to have an own user to run as. Even when connecting to the 
bitlbee server it gives the following warning: "<root> You're running BitlBee 
as root. Why?". I think /var/lib/bitlbee is the only directory for which the 
owner needs to be changed if bitlbee was run under a different user.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

[Comment 1 Jason Wever (RETIRED) 2003-10-15 18:30:59 UTC]

I'll look into fixing this tomorrow or Friday.

What version are you using?

[Comment 2 delete this account 2003-10-15 21:49:05 UTC]

Great. I'm using 0.80-r1, which is flagged x86. 0.81 was apparently released
on bitlbee.org yesterday.

[Comment 3 Jason Wever (RETIRED) 2003-10-16 02:06:50 UTC]

Fixed the init script in bitlbee-0.80-r2.  The user is now nobody, similar
to how it's setup in the xinetd.d conf file.

Let me know if you have any issues, and thanks for the bug :)

[Comment 4 delete this account 2003-10-17 14:12:40 UTC]

There is one problem with 0.80-r2:

root@kuu:/usr/portage/net-im/bitlbee# /etc/init.d/bitlbeed start
 * Starting bitlbeed...
start-stop-daemon: group `nobody' not found

 * Failed to start bitlbeed

[Comment 5 Jason Wever (RETIRED) 2003-10-17 15:03:59 UTC]

What version of sys-apps/baselayout are you using?

[Comment 6 delete this account 2003-10-17 22:49:44 UTC]

1.8.6.11 as i'm using ~x86.

[Comment 7 Jason Wever (RETIRED) 2003-10-18 03:18:13 UTC]

Have you removed the nobody group from /etc/group?  baselayout-1.8.6.11 contails
the nobody group by default.

[Comment 8 delete this account 2003-10-18 04:48:45 UTC]

I re-emerged baselayout and now the init script seems to be working well.
The problem must have been something with glibc as I updated it yesterday.
Thanks for your time and the fix.

[Comment 9 Jason Wever (RETIRED) 2003-10-18 04:57:08 UTC]

No problem.  Glad everything works now :)