From: Daniel Berger <djberg96@...>
Date: 2008-02-02T04:23:02+09:00
Subject: Temporarily dropping root access

Hi all,

Say I've got a C extension with two rake tasks - 'build' and
'install'. For the build task, if currently being run as root, I would
like it to drop down to, say, the 'nobody' user. Obviously, I'm only
talking about Unix here.

I thought I could use Process::UID.switch, but I couldn't make it work
right. Any ideas?

As to why, building as root can causing linkage problems [1]. This
question was originally brought up on the rubygems tracker, btw. [2]

Thanks,

Dan

[1] Just google for "root" + "linkage problems" if you want details
[2] http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=8820&group_id=126&atid=575