Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2025 13:49:30 +0200
From: Andreas =?utf-8?B?S8OkaMOkcmk=?= <andreas.kahari@abc.se>
To: Wolfgang Klein <klein.wolfg@web.de>
Cc: ~alpine/users@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: ddclient: file ownership error
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On Sun, Oct 12, 2025 at 12:34:51PM +0200, Wolfgang Klein wrote:
> Andreas Kähäri wrote:
> 
> > I don't use ddclient, and know nothing about it, but if you started the
> > tool as a user different from the ddclient user, it might be complaining
> > about the fact that the file is not owned by the user you started it as
> > (not actually the ddclient user).  Try starting it as the ddclient user
> > instead.
> > 
> > 	sudo -u ddclient ddclient -daemon=0 -debug -verbose -noquiet
> > 
> > ... or something like that.
> > 
> > If I'm barking up the wrong tree, please ignore me. :)
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> No, it might turn out to be the right tree, but with some obstacles around
> it: since "sudo" is not installed, I tried
> 
> su - ddclient -c "ddclient -daemon=0 -debug -verbose -noquiet"
> 
> and was told, the account is not available. So I changed the shell for user
> ddclient from /sbin/nologin to /bin/bash. After that: no more complaining
> about ownership, but also no output whatsoever! Just a quiet cursor quietly
> entering a new line, that's all. And of course no action is done either.
> 
> So, how to make ddclient work on Alpine? Right now I have no idea. :(
> 
> 
> 
> 

You should not change the shell for the ddclient user.  The fact that
the shell is /sbin/nologin means that the user is not supposed to log in
(interactively). It's a security measure. If you have neither "sudo" nor
"doas", you can use "su" to run the command as the ddclient user via the
root account:

	su -c 'su -p ddclient -c "ddclient -debug -verbose"'

Or, if you are already root:

	su -p ddclient -c 'ddclient -debug -verbose'

The "-p" avoids invoking the user's nologin shell.

Even if I was familiar with the software, it would probably be very
difficult to help you without knowing anything about your configuration.

Glancing at the documentation (https://ddclient.net/), it seems like the
"-daemon=0" and "-noquiet" are set by default, so it's not clear why
you need to set them explicitly.  The rest of the configuration is read
from the configuration file, and you haven't shown us that file (if you
post it, ensure to redact any sensitive information, like passwords and
usernames).


-- 
Matti Andreas Kähäri
Uppsala, Sweden

.