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<html><head><title>dropping privileges in rsyslog</title>
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<h1>Dropping privileges in rsyslog</h1>
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<p><b>Available since: </b> 4.1.1</p>
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<p><b>Description</b>:</p>
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Rsyslogd provides the ability to drop privileges by
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impersonating as another user and/or group after startup.
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<p>Please note that due to POSIX standards, rsyslogd always needs to start
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up as root if there is a listener who must bind to a network port below 1024.
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For example, the UDP listener usually needs to listen to 514 and as such
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rsyslogd needs to start up as root.
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<p>If you do not need this functionality, you can start rsyslog directly as an ordinary
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user. That is probably the safest way of operations. However, if a startup as
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root is required, you can use the $PrivDropToGroup and $PrivDropToUser config
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directives to specify a group and/or user that rsyslogd should drop to after initialization.
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Once this happend, the daemon runs without high privileges (depending, of
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course, on the permissions of the user account you specified).
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<p>There is some additional information available in the
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<a href="http://wiki.rsyslog.com/index.php/Security#Dropping_Privileges">rsyslog wiki</a>.
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<p><b>Configuration Directives</b>:</p>
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<li><b>$PrivDropToUser</b><br>
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Name of the user rsyslog should run under after startup. Please note that
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this user is looked up in the system tables. If the lookup fails, privileges are
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NOT dropped. Thus it is advisable to use the less convenient $PrivDropToUserID directive.
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If the user id can be looked up, but can not be set, rsyslog aborts.
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<li><b>$PrivDropToUserID</b><br>
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Much the same as $PrivDropToUser, except that a numerical user id instead of a name
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is specified.Thus, privilege drop will always happen.
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<li><b>$PrivDropToGroup</b><br>
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Name of the group rsyslog should run under after startup. Please note that
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this user is looked up in the system tables. If the lookup fails, privileges are
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NOT dropped. Thus it is advisable to use the less convenient $PrivDropToGroupID directive.
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Note that all supplementary groups are removed from the process if $PrivDropToGroup is
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If the group id can be looked up, but can not be set, rsyslog aborts.
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<li><b>$PrivDropToGroupID</b><br>
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Much the same as $PrivDropToGroup, except that a numerical group id instead of a name
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is specified. Thus, privilege drop will always happen.
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<p>[<a href="rsyslog_conf.html">rsyslog.conf overview</a>]
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[<a href="manual.html">manual index</a>] [<a href="http://www.rsyslog.com/">rsyslog site</a>]</p>
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<p><font size="2">This documentation is part of the <a href="http://www.rsyslog.com/">rsyslog</a>
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Copyright © 2008 by <a href="http://www.gerhards.net/rainer">Rainer
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<a href="http://www.adiscon.com/">Adiscon</a>.
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Released under the GNU GPL version 3 or higher.</font></p>
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