004. Run Emby Server as a Different User

Motivation

When installing Emby Server following the guides, most standard setup will leave your installation running the Emby-media SystemD service under the user name emby. This can lead to an additional user to be created and maintained in Networked file stores and overall, end up conflicting in terms of permissions. To minimize these issues I always prefer running this service under a standardized service account across different applications, leading to just maintain/provide access to one account instead of several ones.

Core Objective

Modify Emby configuration to run as a specific user "foo" instead of the out of the box "emby"

Required Tools

  1. Emby server installed in Linux server (https://emby.media/linux-server.html)

Instructions

  1. Stop the Emby Service
systemctl stop emby-service
  1. Modify the Systemd service file (/lib/systemd/system/emby-server.service)
nano /lib/systemd/system/emby-server.service

Change:
User = emby

To:

User = foo
  1. Change ownership permissions on Emby core files (/var/lib/emby)
chown foo:fooGroup /var/lib/emby -R
  1. Restart Service
systemctl start emby-service

Results

using htop you can verify that all processes related to Emby Server are now running under your new user "foo"

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