Hi,

while debugging another problem i found out, that programs like flac or lame (called while transcoding) are executed as root and not as the user specified with --user <USER> on the command line.

I'm running SC 7.3-trunk, with

root@host:/.../slimserver.pl ... --user control

ps-output:

$ ps auxw |grep -i squee |grep -v mysql
control  20692  0.7  4.0 247872 162352 ?       Ss   21:42   0:06 /usr/bin/perl -w /opt/squeezecenter/slimserver.pl --daemon --logdir /var/log/squeezecenter --pidfile /var/run/squeezecenter.pid --prefsdir /home/control/squeezecenter/prefs --playlistdir /home/control/squeezecenter/playlist --cachedir /home/control/squeezecenter/cache --user control --group users
control  20713  0.0  0.0   1568   488 ?        S    21:43   0:00 /opt/SqueezeCenter_svn/7.3/trunk/server/Bin/i386-linux/mDNSResponderPosix -f /home/control/squeezecenter/cache/mDNS.conf
root     20782  0.0  0.0  11160  1312 ?        S    21:54   0:00 sh -c "/opt/SqueezeCenter_svn/7.3/trunk/server/Bin/i386-linux/flac" -dcs --skip=0 --until=-0 -- "-" | "/usr/bin/lame" --silent -q 3 -v -B 128 - -
root     20783  0.6  0.0   7016   836 ?        S    21:54   0:00 /opt/SqueezeCenter_svn/7.3/trunk/server/Bin/i386-linux/flac -dcs --skip=0 --until=-0 -- -

AFAIK the problem is in the area of "uid, euid and open2". I've attached a test.pl programm to bug 9356 (I know it's offtopic there ;-)

You'll not see this in problem in any distro packages, because
suse uses:
...startproc -u $SQUEEZECENTER_USER $SQUEEZECENTER_BIN $SQUEEZECENTER_ARGS...
redhat:
...daemon --user $SQUEEZECENTER_USER $SQUEEZECENTER_BIN $SQUEEZECENTER_ARGS...
debian/ubuntu:
...start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --chuid $SLIMUSER...

Those helper programs will drop root privileges and from SC's POV it's uid=euid=$USER and therefore no problem.

I'd like to see lame/flac/... being executed as $USER. If this is not feasible please tell me and i'll revert to start-stop-daemon for my installation. thanks!

kind regards,
Markus