The daemon() function in /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions takes a "--user" option
which tries to run the daemon as that user:

nice -n $nicelevel initlog $INITLOG_ARGS -c "su $daemon_user -c \"$*\"" &&
success "$base startup" || failure "$base startup"

However this causes problems if the daemon makes assumptions about its
environment, for example $HOME remains set to /root, not the homedir of
$daemon_user.   Obviously smart daemons make provisions for this type of
thing in their configuration, but I've encountered some third-party stuff
(namely Blackboard Courseinfo) that relies on the daemon user's
environment.  

This can easily be fixed by running su as "su - $daemon_user ..." to run
the daemon in a "login" shell.  It would probably reduce headaches if this
were the default behavior.