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.