---
name: "runas"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "noshell"
version: "4.0.11-4"
release: "Debian 5.0 (Lenny)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/runas"
---

# runas(8)

program to run daemons as non priviledge users

## NAME

runas — program to run daemons as non priviledge users

## SYNOPSIS

**runas** \[**-c** *location\]  \[uid*\]  \[*gid*\]  \[*program*\]

## DESCRIPTION

**runas** is a small program that   allows administrators a generic way to run daemons as non  privileged users.

**runas** is equivalent to using **su**     but it strips off the environment and does not require the   target user's shell to be legitimate (that is, listed under  **/etc/shells**)

The main reason of using **runas** is to avoid  having daemons run as the root user, in some cases this might be  necessary (like login programs, such as **ssh** or   **telnetd** that need to switch to the user making  the connection) but in many cases it might not be necessary at all.  It can be also a good replacement for **su**, since  it prevents attacks to daemons through the use of environment  variables. Just change (in your initialisation scripts under  **/etc/init.d**) the line:

su - daemon -c /usr/bin/blah

to:

runas daemon daemongroup /usr/bin/blah

## OPTIONS

This program just takes two options:

- **-?**

  Show summary of options.

- **-c**

  Chroot the daemon to a specific location.

## SEE ALSO

[chroot(2)](/chroot/2.md), [chroot(8)](/chroot/8.md)

*The TITAN FAQ (link to URL http://www.trouble.org/titan/FAQ.html)*

## AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Javier Fernandez-Sanguino Pen~a \<jfs@computer.org\> for  the **Debian** system (but may be used by others).  Permission is  granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under  the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 any   later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public  License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.