Re: [Bacula-users] Re: Director dies

[Martin S. <ma...@li...>]

>>>>> On Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:01:19 +0200, "Timo Neuvonen" <tim...@te...> said:

  >> Try to figure out why it doesn't start.  Find what command line args are
  Timo> being
  >> passed to bacula-dir e.g. by
  >> 
  >> sh -x /etc/init.d/bacula start
  >> Then run bacula-dir with the same command line args to see if it reports
  >> auything.
  >> 
  Timo> It very shy... reports very nothing before dying.

  Timo> 1.38.2 started with this:
  Timo> /usr/sbin/bacula-dir -u root -g bacula -c /etc/bacula/bacula-dir.conf

  Timo> After some trial and error, I noticed that this also made 1.38.3 to start.
  Timo> So, the problem is (or seems to be) in startup script, specifically:

  Timo> 1.38.2:
  Timo> DIR_USER=root
  Timo> DIR_GROUP=bacula
  Timo> 1.38.3
  Timo> DIR_USER=bacula
  Timo> DIR_GROUP=bacula

Ah, well spotted.

Since you have run it as root on the same machine, the problem could be file
permissions on something that bacula-dir opens on startup (e.g. the log and
state files).  You could try adding the -f option to see if that prints some
output.  If that doesn't help, then try running under strace -f and look for
calls to open that fail with permission problems.


  Timo> Someone wiser than me needs to decide, if it's ok simply to change back user
  Timo> to root. Or is there a reason why not to do this? Are there some other
  Timo> changes that would really require a non-root user?

The reason for running as non-root is security.  If the Director had a bug
that could do some damage or be exploited by a malicious attacker then running
it as non-root allows you to restrict how much can be damaged.

__Martin