HomeDocumentation > Installing and running > Running Geronimo > Running Geronimo as a non-root user

It is very likely that you will not want to have the Geronimo server process under the super user root. The following are a series of simple steps for changing the ownership and permissions for the required files in order to run Geronimo with a different user.

The following tasks should be performed while logged in as root or a user with enough access rights.

  1. Create a new user (i.e. gmo) and add it to a specific user group. You could use the predefined www user group for instance.
  2. Edit the .bashrc for the user you just created and add the PATH and JAVA_HOME variables:
        PATH=$PATH:<java_home>/bin
        export PATH
        JAVA_HOME=<java_home>
        export JAVA_HOME
    
  3. Change the user group to all the subdirs in <geronimo_home>
    chown -R root:www <geronimo_home>
    
  4. Create a deploy directory within the <geronimo_home> directory structure.
  5. Change the access permissions to the following directories
        chmod -R 774 <geronimo_home>/bin
        chmod -R 774 <geronimo_home>/deploy
        chmod -R 774 <geronimo_home>/repository
        chmod -R 774 <geronimo_home>/var
    
  6. Login as the new user (i.e. gmo)
  7. Start the server
    cd <geronimo_home>/bin
    ./geronimo.sh run 
    

You are now able to run and deploy applications with a user other than root.