Question

How to remove the user nobody ?

Hi ... I am in the process of installing twiki on my system ... Its for a project i'm doing.. So i was reading the section "Editing the configuration files" ... It says to check the settings of twiki by running the testenv script.. I ran that and here is a subsection of the output

$pubDir: /home/haynes/twiki/pub

Note

This is the public directory, as seen from the file system. It must correspond to $pubUrlPath.

Error

This directory is not writable by nobody user.

Note

This is the TWiki template directory, as seen from the file system.

Note

This is the data directory where TWiki stores all topics.

Error

This directory must be writable by the nobody user.

I had changed the permissions of all the files in pub/ bin/ lib/ to a different user "haynes" .. but the error is still coming..

How do i remove this nobody?? .. If it stays there .. wont i be able to execute the CGI scripts as ?? I suppose i should be as i am the user owning the cgi scripts..

plz do help

haynes

Environment

-- HaynesMathew - 15 Aug 2005

Answer

If you answer a question - or someone answered one of your questions - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status selector is below the edit box.

THis is not a TWiki problem, this is an Apache issue, and 'not a problem'.

When you run testenv you should see:

User:    nobody
   Note: Your CGI scripts are executing as this user.

The nobody user is a Linux user, see the file /etc/passwd, not a TWiki user. It is the identity the Apache tasks run under. It is a low priviledged identity so that if someone does break into the server the damage they can do is limited.

The CGI scripts must be readable by the nobody at the Linux permission level.

Do not try to remove this identity.

I strongly suggest reading the Apache documentation on instaltion & configuration of teh Apache server.

I repeat: this is not a TWiki problem; it is not an Apache problem. It is a matter of understanding how Apache works and configuring the access permission to match - which is why I term it an Apache issue.

-- AntonAylward - 16 Aug 2005