Tomcat does indeed just run as whoever executes the script. If you're interested in more information you can see an article I wrote for devWorks on Securing Linux for Java services at http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-secjav.html that discusses setting up Tomcat for automatic start, using its own account, responding to port 80, and related issues.I would assume that you are getting this behavior because you are running Tomcat itself as root. Perhaps you are listening on port 80 (which requires you to run as root).
I thought so too, but for the life of me I can't find where to set the user tomcat runs as (and I'm running on 8080, so I don't need to run as root and would prefer not to). Does tomcat just run as whoever executes the $tomcat/bin/startup.sh script? Surely I don't have to su to nobody everytime I want to start or reload tomcat, right?
- Dennis
Dennis M. Sosnoski Enterprise Java, XML, and Web Services Support http://www.sosnoski.com Redmond, WA 425.885.7197
