launchd and non-root user scheduling

I tried your suggestion of adding the keyword "UserName" and string value into the plist and then moving the plist into /Library/LaunchDaemons/

Then, launchd (I presume) promply removed the UserName keyword and value from the plist and launched the script as root. Oh well. I guess Apple sees this as an unacceptable security risk.

The location of the plist determines the userid and if I recall correctly, ownership must match the directory it is located within (root for /Library/LaunchDaemons userid for /Users/userid/Library...)

The "problem" is the userid of the running process. The actual script owner doesn't seem to affect anything.

The launchd daemon uses the location of the scheduling plist to determine the process userid. If the plist is in the /Library or /System/Library tree then the process is started as root. If in ~/Library tree, then it is the owner of that directory used as the userid.

Yes, the whole point of this is to schedule a script to run as a user other than root, regardless of whether that user has logged in since startup.

(This is more of an excercise than anything else. Running as root is discouraged when the tasks don't require super user authority.)

Thanks

As I mentioned previously, when lauchd loads the plist file, it removes the key UserName and value from the plist (in /Library/LaunchDaemons).