Setting up a new non-root user for WebSphere Application Server (Linux, UNIX)

If you have IBM® InfoSphere® Information Server installed, you can create a user who can manage WebSphere® Application Server processes. These steps need to be completed only once.

Before you begin

Make sure to read the restrictions in Configuring WebSphere Application Server for non-root administration (Linux, UNIX).

Important: Before you begin this task, back up your system so that the backup can be used to restore the original state if necessary. See Backing up and restoring IBM InfoSphere Information Server.

About this task

The general purpose in these instructions is to transfer the ownership of some of the files under WebSphere Application Server and InfoSphere Information Server to the new non-root user, at which point the new user would be able to take over the management of the WebSphere Application Server process. This one-time setup task describes the steps for creating the user. The post installation instructions describe the steps that must be performed after you install any add-on components to the services tier or if any of the application servers were restarted as the root user and you want them to be started again as the non-root user.

These steps use wasadmin as the new non-root user. However, this is just an example user name; you can use any user name that you want, or use an existing user.

To complete this task, you must be a system administrator with root access.

Procedure

  1. If the non-root user that you want to run the application server with does not exist, create it:
    Note: The wasadmin user is used as an example.
    useradd -m -d /home/wasadmin wasadmin
  2. Set the umask of this user to 0022 by typing: umask 0022

What to do next

Proceed to the post-installation tasks for either a stand-alone environment or cluster environment to configure the settings in InfoSphere Information Server for the non-root user: (Stand-alone environment) Running post-installation commands to enable non-root administration (Linux, UNIX) or (Cluster environment) Running post-installation commands to enable non-root administration (Linux, UNIX)