samba as non-root

[Peter Samuelson]

[Calixto Melean <cmelean at yahoo.com>]
> Is there any way to run samba as a non-root user?

I don't believe so.  There are a lot of places within Samba where it
needs root privileges for one reason or another.  Some of these (maybe
all) could be eliminated -- you can run it from inetd to avoid having
to bind to a low port, or you can run encrypted passwords to avoid
having to read the system shadow file -- but there are other places
where it *thinks* it needs root access (i.e. to read/write the
smbpasswd file) where you could convince it otherwise but only by
patching the source.

Like all good daemons, Samba drops privileges at every opportunity, but
I do understand the desire to run as non-root from the get-go....

Peter