[Wrapper-user] Run as user and privilege separation

[Farkas L. <lf...@lf...>]

We like to replace jsvc
(http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-daemon/jsvc.html) with java
service wrapper but we've got a few comments/problems.

First of all (IMHO) run as user is not usable in the current form most
of the case. The idea behind not to run a service as root is not mean
that we just  run as a different user.
Look at all other system services (eg apache). There is a parent process
running as root and it'll do all the root required tasks eg lock file,
pid file, log files and then create a child process with the given user.
But you create _both_ process running as the same user. Of course in
this case the lock pid and log file creation also problematic. What more
you run the parent process with runuser or su which requires valid shell
eg: /sbin/nologin cannot be used for a given user which used to be the
case for a service. Since the main reason to not as root that the given
user don't have login shell and has less privileges. To be valid login
shell for a service is a potential security risk. These two things used
in the past few decades and none of them can be used with this wrapper.
For an implementation see jsvc's source.

Another side note that even if I put wrapper.so into the system library
path eg /usr/lib and do not set the value of the
wrapper.java.library.path in the wrapper.conf wrapper can't find it.
why? imho it'd have to be the default to search for it in the system
library path...but it seems that if i uncomment this variable:
-Djava.library.path=./
probably it'd be better not to set anything in this case.

it's possible to set an environment variable as
wrapper.java.classpath.1, but in this case we always got this error/warning:
Classpath element, wrapper.java.classpath.1, does not exist
even it's working it's very annoying.

regards.

-- 
  Levente                               "Si vis pacem para bellum!"