The system service /etc/sv/soju runs soju as system user _soju. By default, the database will be stored in /var/db/soju/ and logs will be in /var/log/soju/. Both directories are owned by user _soju. To initialize the database, make sure you run sojudb as the _soju user: $ sudo -u _soju sojudb -config /etc/soju/config create-user <username> -admin