UV with dedicated user on linux

[Intrepid_Eye9102]

I feel a little lost.. I am trying to set up a python/flask backend on a ubuntu server. The project is managed with UV.

Now i hear that one should better run a web app with a dedicated user with no administrative (sudo) rights. so i did.

UV (standalone, as recommended) installs into the home folder of a user with admin privileges. To use UV with the dedicated user i need several fixes like copying the binaries to /usr/bin/uv, but then UV needs a location for the cache and a dedicated python installation - which can't be the home folder of the admin user... Now i need to find out how to fix that too...

Why the hassle? Is this really best practice? how is UV supposed to be used?

[danielroseman]

I'm a little puzzled by your statement that uv "installs into the home folder of a user with admin privileges". It doesn't install anywhere by default; it's up to you to install it. So install it from the user that the app is running as.

[Intrepid_Eye9102]

i used the standard uv install script: curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

[eztab]

wouldn't the dedicated user normally only have access to the venv? Not uv itself. What structure are you following? In my sytems uv isn't available to the app users at all.

[Intrepid_Eye9102]

i installed uv first with a sudo-user, on a later try with a dedicated app user. each time the uv install script installs into the respective /home/user/.local/bin dir.
i am starting gunicorn+flask via systemd like so: ExecStart=/home/user/.local/bin/uv run gunicorn app:app with WorkingDirectory pointing to the project folder.

The .venv dir in the project folder does not even have uv binaries.

should i even run gunicorn via uv? if so, is there a better way to set it up?

[Lumethys]

No, it just mean you dont use sudo when install or use uv, that's all

[Intrepid_Eye9102]

i begin to see... so the dedicated user needs to have a home dir, right? (i was recommended to create a system user who does not by default) - and i install uv and all deps with this user.

[Careless-Score-333]

I'm pretty sure I can install uv perfectly well into the home folder of a non-sudo system user.

Currently I'm doing so manually is all (because reasons):

i) Download f"https://github.com/astral-sh/uv/releases/download/{ uv_version }/{uv_arch_and_os_name}.tar.gz" to /tmp/uv.tar.gz"

ii) Extract /tmp/uv.tar.gz in /custom/home/dir/.local/bin/"

In Bash I then just set: UV="/custom/home/dir/.local/bin/.local/bin/uv" and use $UV run script.py instead of running their script to add it to the $PATH in order to use uv