Should I add the user www-data? Trying to get Rails off the ground

Question

I'm trying to set up a Rails application on a redhat server, and in accordance with instructions I have found on multiple tutorials, I wish to set the owner of certain directories to 'www-data' so that Passenger shall have owner-access.

However, I find that this user does not exist, so I am in doubt: should I make the user with the adduser command? What I've read is that if I do so but do not set a password, the user shall be locked. Am I to create a password for this user?

The title of this thread was a bit misleading in saying 'get Rails off the ground' because I actually have had this app running for some time, but I would like to implement best practices.

QuentinMoss · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-12T00:03:09.770

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You can find the user that your webserver is using by executing ps aux | grep httpd

if httpd doesn't show any information, you can try using ps aux | grep apache

There should also be a user defined in your httpd.conf file.

One way to find this is egrep -iw --color=auto 'user|group' /path/to/httpd/conf

edited Feb 12 '13 at 00:03

answered Feb 11 '13 at 23:55

QuentinMoss

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Okay. `daemon` shows up in the first column for all the results except the first, which reads `root`. Is daemon the owner? – JellicleCat Feb 11 '13 at 23:57

Lucas Kauffman · Answer 2 · 2013-02-11T23:56:27.780

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www-data is the user under which your webserver runs. This may vary so you need to check your webserver's manual to see under what user it's running. This might also be called httpd instead of www-data depending on your operating system and webserver. If you just add him it probably will not work as you need to have the specific user that's being used by your webserver.

EDIT

On Red Hat the default user is apache

edited Feb 11 '13 at 23:56

answered Feb 11 '13 at 23:47

Lucas Kauffman

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I get the same message for httpd: `chown: invalid user: \`httpd:httpd'`. – JellicleCat Feb 11 '13 at 23:48
Like I said it depends on your webserver, operating system and configuration. What webserver are you running? – Lucas Kauffman Feb 11 '13 at 23:49
Apache + Phusion Passenger. (I looked in http-manual.conf for a clue as to the user name, but don't see anything that looks like a user name.) – JellicleCat Feb 11 '13 at 23:53
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check what user your Apache is using by using `ps aux|grep -i 'apache'` – Lucas Kauffman Feb 11 '13 at 23:54
Try to see if the user apache exists – Lucas Kauffman Feb 11 '13 at 23:56
There is a user named apache in my /etc/passwd file, but what shows up when I grep ps is `root` and `daemon`. – JellicleCat Feb 11 '13 at 23:58

Should I add the user www-data? Trying to get Rails off the ground

2 Answers2