[LON-CAPA-admin] filesystem permissions question

[Todd Ruskell]

Hi,

I just did a library server migration from Suse 9.3/LON-CAPA 2.6.3 to
CentOS 5/LON-CAPA 2.7.  On the old server, we had a "dummy" user which
contained a library of problems, and there was an actual username with a
local login account on that server.

I decided that the local login account was no longer needed on the new
server, so didn't create it.  So when I copied files over via rsync,
that directory tree is now owned by UID 2136, but that UID is no longer
attached to a specific user.

Now, when I log into LON-CAPA on the new system as either author or
co-author, I could not enter construction space, due to a lack of
permissions.  This actually happens even for users who have local
accounts on the new system:

"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /~username/ on this server."

Further investigation revealed that a directory listing of the home
directory on the filesystem of the new server reveals the following:

# ls -al
total 40
drwx--x---  3 2136 2136 4096 Jul 20  2003 .
drwxr-xr-x 54 root root 4096 Aug 15 11:19 ..
-rw-------  1 2136 2136  123 Jul 20  2003 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--  1 2136 2136   24 Jul 20  2003 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--  1 2136 2136  191 Jul 20  2003 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--  1 2136 2136  124 Jul 20  2003 .bashrc
-rw-r--r--  1 2136 2136  854 Jul 20  2003 .emacs
-rw-r--r--  1 2136 2136  118 Jul 20  2003 .gtkrc
drwxrwsr-x 35 www  www  4096 Jan 23  2008 public_html

Note that the home directory is *not* executable by all.  Doing a chmod
a+x to the home directory seems to fix all access problems.  At one
level this makes sense to me, but is it something I should be doing?  Or
does access need to be granted in some other way?

Thanks,

Todd

-- 
Dr. Todd Ruskell
Senior Lecturer, Department of Physics       Office:  Meyer Hall 326
Colorado School of Mines                     Phone: 303-384-2080
1523 Illinois Street                         Fax: 303-273-3919
Golden, CO 80401