Frequently Asked Questions

How do I change the user account used to run SmedgeEngine as a Service or daemon?

When you install Smedge on Windows, you can optionally include a user account and password that will be used to run the Service. If you leave these fields blank in the installer, Smedge will try to create a user account on the local machine (username Smedge, password Smedge). Because this account is an Administrator account, this may be a security issue on your network.

If you need to change the user account, you use one of the following methods:

Run the installer again

Supply a different user account and password when you run the installer, and the Service will be re-installed with this account information.

Use the SmedgeEngine Service installation commandline options

You can manually configure the information used by the Service database, including the User account and password. The syntax of the commandline is:

SmedgeEngine -InstallService -Name Smedge 3 Engine -User User -Password Password

Use the Services Control Panel

Follow these steps:

1. Open Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services
2. Scroll down until you see the Smedge 3 Engine service listed, and double click it to open the properties dialog box.
3. Click on the Log On tab.
4. Click on the This Account button. The password will be pre-filled with a lot of dots. Don’t worry about this, it’s a Microsoft "security" measure.
5. Fill in the user and password (twice) that we created above, and click the Apply button.
6. Windows may display some confirmation dialog boxes. The first indicates that the account we just created has been granted permission to be used for services. Once this permission has been granted, you will not see this message again. The second confirmation only appears if the Service is currently running. It notifies you that the change you just made won’t be applied until you stop and restart the Service.
7. Click on the General tab.
8. If the Service is running, click the Stop button.
9. Click the Start button to start the Service with the new user account.

---

On Linux, you need to use the SMEDGE_USER environment variable. Set this value to the user account you want to run the SmedgeEngine daemon. You can also use the SMEDGE_UMASK environment variable if you want to adjust the umask that Smedge will use when creating files while running as a daemon.