How do you run this as sudo?

[ArsalanDotMe]

I haven't actually tested this library yet but as far as I understand, the underlying native library needs to run under root for this to work. Do you run nodejs as root user or is there a way for nodejs to run under an ordinary user and still be able to control the LEDs?

[hzeller]

The underlying library allows to drop privileges after the hardware is set up via some option. Not sure if this is already accessible in this nodejs wrapper.

[zeitungen]

I have only tested with root user (and sudo privilegies).
I have to get some time to update this nodejs wrapper with the new (cool) stuff from @hzeller library ...

[ArsalanDotMe]

Do you think it's okay to run nodejs as root in a production environment? If not, is there some other way of communicating with the native binary running under root through non-root nodejs? A possible approach would be to communicate with an already running root binary through unix sockets. Does that sound okay?

[zeitungen]

I guess it's no the best way to run in root in production environment.
For now, I use this lib for some testing an playing with a LedMatrix in my home, I produce no serious work yet with it. So the security question in a production environment is far away for the usage I have with it unitl today.
For this reasons I cannot respond to yours others questions. But it seems to be a hard and complicated way to do, mainly if the C library from @hzeller have now mechanism to drop this privilegies.

[Dhanielk]

@hzeller do we need root only for /dev/mem? Can't we use /dev/gpiomem instead?

[hzeller]

It also needs to initialize the timer subsystem, which is also memory mapped.
But if this is accessible via /dev/gpiomem, then I am happy to accept a pull request that alternatively works with that as well.