Why is the home directory = / when running from daemon(8)?

0 - pick any user

I used librenms, but it works with any user:

$ grep librenms /etc/passwd 
librenms:*:249:249:LibreNMS pseudo-user:/var/db/librenms/home:/bin/sh

NOTE: I'm taking a different approach which does not rely upon a HOME directory.

1 - mytest

place this in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/mytest

#!/bin/sh

. /etc/rc.subr

name=mytest
rcvar="${name}_enable"

load_rc_config $name

: ${mytest_enable:="NO"}
: ${librenms_user:="librenms"}
: ${librenms_pid:="/var/run/librenms/librenms-extra.pid"}

pidfile="$librenms_pid"
procname="/usr/local/bin/python3.7"
command="/usr/sbin/daemon"

# we neeed $procname here - that's what rc.d looks for to maintain (start/stop/restart)
command_args="-T $name -p $pidfile -u $librenms_user $procname /usr/home/dan/tmp/home.py"

run_rc_command "$1"

2 - home.py

Adjust the file location in mytest above:

$ cat ~/tmp/home.py
#!/usr/local/bin/python3

#print os.getenv("HOME")
from os.path import expanduser
home = expanduser("~")

print(home)

import os
import pwd

print(pwd.getpwuid( os.getuid() ).pw_name)

if 'HOME' in os.environ:
    print('HOME environment variable is already defined. Value =', os.environ['HOME'])
else:
    print('HOME environment variable is not defined.')

3 - the output

$  sudo service mytest onestart
Starting mytest.


Then in /var/log/messages:

May  9 21:25:20 librenms mytest[65380]: /
May  9 21:25:20 librenms mytest[65380]: librenms
May  9 21:25:20 librenms mytest[65380]: HOME environment variable is already defined. Value = /