Do I need to run DenyHosts as root?
If you are running DenyHosts in daemon mode then yes you must run DenyHosts as root. In all other cases, such as running DenyHosts from cron then technically speaking, no. However, in order to run DenyHosts as non-root you must ensure that you have read-permissions on the /var/log/ sshd server logs. Alternatively, you can copy them to a directory where you do have read-permissions. Also, in order for DenyHosts to block hosts, it needs write permissions for the /etc/hosts.deny file. DenyHosts will gladly run without being able to update this file. In this mode, the hosts that should be blocked are written to stdout (in a form suitable for pasting into /etc/hosts.deny). Also, you can use an alternate HOSTS_DENY file (other than /etc/hosts.deny) which may not require root priviledges.
