Changing the user account running SageTV in Linux

[Monedeath]

I only have a very rudimentary working knowledge of Linux, and haven't been in the Linux side of SageTV for very long at all(first day == today)... But from what I'm seeing, it is currently running on my server as Root. I'd rather that not be the case. Is there a way to see about changing that?

I can understand that running it under Root as a "make it work" solution is great and all, but it kind of defeats one of the points of running it under Linux. Particularly if you're running a webserver through SageTV. (Such as Jetty)

[stuckless]

The Docker image does exactly this... ie, it runs sagetv as a 'sagetv' user. My recommendation is to review the scripts that make up the docker container, since they show everything from creating users, setting permissions, etc... Or, you could install Docker and just run the container, pointing it at your local media.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by stuckless

The Docker image does exactly this... ie, it runs sagetv as a 'sagetv' user. My recommendation is to review the scripts that make up the docker container, since they show everything from creating users, setting permissions, etc... Or, you could install Docker and just run the container, pointing it at your local media.

I was under the impression it was requiring Unraid? I just used the stock .deb installer to get it running on my new Ubuntu 16.04 system.

That said, this probably shouldn't be a specialized install script thing, but rather on the generic installer itself. Other products, such as Plex, install under their own user. Sage should be doing a comparable thing, IMO.

Root as the default for installs is just very bad form.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Monedeath

I was under the impression it was requiring Unraid? I just used the stock .deb installer to get it running on my new Ubuntu 16.04 system.

That said, this probably shouldn't be a specialized install script thing, but rather on the generic installer itself. Other products, such as Plex, install under their own user. Sage should be doing a comparable thing, IMO.

Root as the default for installs is just very bad form.

I don't think anyone would complain if you submitted a patch.

[stuckless]

The docker container is certainly not an unRAID thing, but, it is used to compose a complete system, that has integrated support for comskip, etc. ie, it doesn't just install sagetv, but rather it installs a bunch of things that sagetv can also use (comskip, gentuner, etc).

The biggest challenge with running as non-root, is permissions to hardware, files, etc. This is solved to some extent in the docker container, since it knows about the sagetv files, and, it has "known" support for things like gentuner, lirc, etc, so it can set all permissions accordingly.

In a non-docker world, you install sagetv as a non-root user, and suddenly you can't access video, ir turning, etc... and then you need start to updating the permissions on nodes, setting groups, etc, to make it all work.

SageTV running as root was likely done because because on a linux system, you are not getting access to all the hardware like tuners, lirc, etc, without first setting up all the permissions. App like PLEX generally aren't accessing the harware directly, so it can run entirely well in userland.

SageTV can be made to run entirely in userland as well, and you might decide to take it on, and submit the required patches (it wouldn't be a bad thing)... but since many linux users are also using the docker container for convenience, I'm, not sure who else might do it.

I tend to use the docker container for all my test servers, running on my Ubuntu box, and I use Docker for the unRAID primary server as well. (The docker containers do not use the .deb install files, it uses the tgz packages)