[13:47] <benc1> ion: the debug statement helped. I needed to export HOME=/root
[13:48] <benc1> ion: I wonder what should I set HOME to if I want to run as non super user without a home dir
[14:03] <ion> su sets HOME here. In the future, when Upstart itself initializes PAM sessions for non-root jobs, that will initialize their session in a similar way. All users have *some* home directory in their passwd entry.
[14:04] <benc1> what do you mean by 'su sets HOME here'?
[14:04] <benc1> that if I'm using su I don't need to export HOME?
[14:05] <ion> Yeah. su initializes a PAM session for the command, and i’m sure some PAM module creates the proper environment with HOME set.
[14:06] <benc1> shouldn't upstart set HOME=/root if I'm running as root?
[14:06] <ion> Upstart doesn’t create a PAM session for *any* job at the moment. It sounds like your job wants a PAM session. su 'exec foo' root might be what you want in the meantime.
[14:07] <benc1> ok
[14:07] <ion> su -c 'exec foo' root, that is.
[14:08] <ion> export HOME=... might suffice, of course, depending on the program. But su -c '' root will surely run the command in a familiar environment.
[14:09] <benc1> 'su -c'  will probably make sure the PATH is also set
[14:11] <ion> Upstart itself sets PATH to some internal default value, but su -c '' root should create an environment with PATH set according to the PAM configuration for a root login session.
[14:12] <benc1> I probably don't want to use 'erl -detached' so upstart can monitor the process, right?
[14:13] <ion> Yeah, don’t use that until Upstart 0.10, which can properly monitor all processes, no matter how they behave.
[14:13] <ion> Current Upstart has some rudimentary support for following forks, but one can upset that functionality very easily.
[14:14] <benc1> what will 'erl -noinput' do?
[14:14] <benc1> you said you use that
[14:15] <ion> man erl :-)
[14:15] <benc1> ok. thanks
[14:16] <ion> http://github.com/ion1/camera-control/blob/master/camera-control.upstart
[14:16] <ion> http://github.com/ion1/camera-control/blob/master/releases/0/run
[14:19] <benc1> thanks
[14:20] <ion> The Upstart job has some rudimentary log rotation, but i’ll replace it with something saner some day.
[14:21] <benc1> what will you replace it with?
[14:21] <ion> An Erlang logger that saves plaintext logs but with rotation similar to mf.
[14:22] <benc1> ok
[14:22] <ion> One might exist already, i haven’t really looked yet.
[14:22] <benc1> it will be nice to have upstart with log rotation and reload event
[14:23] <ion> Yeah, Upstart might implement the logging of jobs’ std{out,err} first, i’ll just use that then. :-)
[18:51] <systest> perhaps I've missed it in the docs, but is there a simple "disable" argument for services defined in /etc/init? (similar to the xinetd option)