www-data as owner of /var/www

["Bryan Richardson" <btricha@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,

Just curious, it it dangerous to allow www-data to own /var/www?  /var/www is the home directory for www-data, but I noticed that the default user and group for /var/www is root.  Is there a reason for this?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm installing a Trac site with some Trac Hacks, and python has to uncompress some of the egg files when loading them.  The default location to do this is /var/www/.python-eggs, since /var/www is www-data's home directory.

Please let me know whether or not it's okay to make www-data the default user and group for /var/www!

Thanks in advance.  BTR