Kermit, The reason I asked was that I seem to remember (been a long time since I installed and configured apache) that it was suggested that the directory that holds the web site (/var/www) be owned by someone other than root (such as www-data:www-data) and the other directories were owned by root. I haven't seen anything to that effect with my readings though so I wondered if security, etc. had improved so much that it wasn't necessary. I wanted to be able to update the directory without using root via sftp so I was planning on providing that capability to a different account (from root and www-data). It appears from your response that I can do what I was planning as long as the directory is world readable. Thank you, Brian. -----Original Message----- From: Kermit Short [mailto:k_short@xxxxxxxx] Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 7:04 AM To: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; bstreet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: [users@httpd] Apache2 on Debian Brian- Your question depends on what you mean by "everything". If you're talking strictly about the directories that hold static files, it's fine that root owns it. Please note, however, that that it should be "world readable" or else the www-data user/group won't be able to even read it, and therefore won't be able to serve it out. On the other hand, if you are talking about file systems such as CGI directories (usually defined in the <Directory /cgi-bin> directive), permissions should be carefully planned and analyzed, as malicious users could do great damage to yours and other systems if these are improperly set. Finally, if you have other processes running that will need to access portions of your file system, you'll need to make sure that those UIDs have been added to the necessary group, or that the proper world-scoped permissions have been applied to the necessary parts of the file tree. Hope that helps! Kermit Short System Administrator CCN-DC-1 D-Div ph: 7-6360 pg: 4-5165 em: k_short@xxxxxxxx -----Original Message----- From: Brian Street [mailto:bstreet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 3:36 PM To: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [users@httpd] Apache2 on Debian Hello everyone, I'm interested in whether or not people running Apache2 on Debian 3.1 create a separate user for the web directory (/var/www/xxx). The default install has root owning everything, but starting the web server as www-data. Thank you, Brian. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project. See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info. To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx " from the digest: users-digest-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --------------------------------------------------------------------- The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project. See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info. To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx " from the digest: users-digest-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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