Web Server User: Which one is it and how do I use it?

English Applications
1

So basically I’m on Opensuse 12.3 64-bit with the latest apache, mysql and phpmyadmin. This system is mainly for testing network monitoring and performance software. Some examples of the software I’ve tried to install are: Icinga, Owncloud (not network monitoring obviously), zabbix and Nconf. Now if I remember right, Nconf is the only one that uses mysql. I was able to reset the mysql root user and make a database, but I noticed that none of these applications would work from the package from the package manager. I had to download the zip/tars of them and put them in the htdocs folder manually. I also had to change the write permissions on the folders to 777 in order for them to run correctly.

So the question is:

I know that 777 is not safe for web and network for that matter. How do I make these folders work correctly with lower permissions?

2

Pure guess but maybe you need to add yourself to a group that has the proper permissions rather then change the permissions

3

On openSUSE apache normally runs as user “wwwrun”, group “www”.

4

We’ve added the www group to the logged in user.

This had no effect.

Maybe the better question is what user and group should we use to install web apps.

5

And to combine both above posts, I would create a separate user for managing web pages, etc. This to make a very clear and save boundary between your daily work (banking, whatever) and you web managing. And of course make www it’s group. And make all web pages, etc. in /srv owned by that user and group.

6

Well, the standard web directory is /srv/www/htdocs/ which is owned by root:root.
So you would have to make sure that your user can access that.

Or use the user home directory ~/public_html, which you can access with the URL “http://localhost/~username”.

And as I said, apache runs as wwwrun:www, so that user has to have access to the webfile.
But that’s mostly a problem for write permissions.

7

Jonnothin wrote:
> So basically I’m on Opensuse 12.3 64-bit with the latest apache, mysql
> and phpmyadmin. This system is mainly for testing network monitoring and
> performance software. Some examples of the software I’ve tried to
> install are: Icinga, Owncloud (not network monitoring obviously), zabbix
> and Nconf. Now if I remember right, Nconf is the only one that uses
> mysql. I was able to reset the mysql root user and make a database, but
> I noticed that none of these applications would work from the package
> from the package manager.

What do you mean by “the package manager”?

Do you mean YaST, zypper, or something else?

And what repository did these packages come from?

> I had to download the zip/tars of them and put
> them in the htdocs folder manually. I also had to change the write
> permissions on the folders to 777 in order for them to run correctly.
>
> So the question is:
>
> I know that 777 is not safe for web and network for that matter. How do
> I make these folders work correctly with lower permissions?

Depending on the answers to the questions above, it may be better to
concentrate on making the packages work instead.