Running Kong as a Non-Root User

After installing Kong Gateway (Enterprise) on a GNU/Linux system, you can configure Kong to run as the built-in kong user and group instead of root. This makes the Nginx master and worker processes run as the kong user and group, overriding any settings in the nginx_user configuration property.

Warning
The Nginx master process needs to run as root for Nginx to execute certain actions (for example, to listen on the privileged port 80).

Although running Kong as the kong user and group does provide more security, we advise that a system and network administration evaluation be performed before making this decision. Otherwise, Kong nodes might become unavailable due to insufficient permissions to execute privileged system calls in the operating system.

Prerequisites

Kong Gateway (Enterprise) is installed on one of the following Linux distributions:

Run Kong Enterprise as a non-root user

Switch to the kong user and group:
```
1
 $ su kong
```
Start Kong:
```
1
 kong start
```