Re: [gentoo-dev] Poll: Where should web applications be installed?

[Max Kalika]

Quoting Stuart Herbert <stuart@g.o>:

>> One question though.  Why do all
>> ebuilds currently insist on making files owned by the web user (apache)?
>> Seems very wrong to me as the apache user is able to write to the
>> applications.  It seems just like giving ownership to a regular user
>> account  for other applications.
>
> Because most web apps are badly written, and rely on write access to
> directories on the machine.  Sorry - I just can't think of a polite way
> to  put that ;-)

Not all applications.  The ones I've been dealing with work perfectly well
having all the files owned by root.  I'm speaking of the entire Horde suite
(and not just because I'm on the Horde team ;-)), phpMyAdmin, mailman, etc.
I would really urge to only make the files owned by the web user when
absolutely necessary.

> As an interesting aside, because we run apache under the apache user
> (rather  than a nobody user), it'll make the business of supporting
> multiple web  servers quite a mess.  I mean, if you install tikiwiki,
> which user should own  it?!?

I'd say we have to pick a de-facto web server and install all apps based on
that.  If a user wants a webserver other than apache, it is really easy to
chown all the files (if that is all that has to be done).  And if an
application doesn't require being owned by the web user, things are even
easier.  The only thing that has to be done is to do a configuration block
similar to how apache needs it, and that can eventually be worked into that
eclass I posted earlier -- if that is the way we want to go.

> I read your post about having proposed this before, but with no real
> response.   Tell you what - if no-one else sends through any feedback, I
> guess no-one  would really notice if we went ahead and just did this? ;-)

:-)  I'll wait a day or so.  If you want to discuss this further, catch me
on irc (alkern).

--mk

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