Got bitcoind working from upstart; tried at first using the chroot and setuid stanzas, but it wasn't starting and I didn't want to research it any more, so I just used su:
ubuntu@bitcoin:~$ cat /etc/init/bitcoind.conf # run bitcoind as user ubuntu, respawning on failure # it has a memory leak so I expect it to get killed off occasionally start on stopped RUNLEVEL=[2345] stop on runlevel [!2345] respawn exec chroot /mnt su - ubuntu -c "bin/bitcoind" ubuntu@bitcoin:~$ cat bin/bitcoind #!/bin/bash sudo chroot /mnt su - ubuntu -c "bin/bitcoind $*" ubuntu@bitcoin:~$ bitcoind getbalance 0.00000001
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