To create a database and user account for use on PostgreSQL:
root@devotion:~# su - postgres
postgres@devotion:~$ psql
psql (8.4.21)
Type "help" for help.
postgres=# create user "www-data" superuser;
CREATE ROLE
postgres=# create database mydb with owner "www-data";
CREATE DATABASE
postgres=# \c mydb
psql (8.4.21)
You are now connected to database "mydb".
^
mydb=# alter user "www-data" with password 'secret';
ALTER ROLE
On my development machine I want Apache to run under my user id so I can automatically generate files (and have permission to write them).
I configured Apache like this:
root@mercy:/etc/apache2# grep -R www-data . ./envvars:export APACHE_RUN_USER=www-data ./envvars:export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=www-data root@mercy:/etc/apache2# vim envvars export APACHE_RUN_USER=jj5 export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=jj5 root@mercy:/etc/apache2# apache2ctl graceful /var/lock/apache2 already exists but is not a directory owned by jj5. Please fix manually. Aborting. root@mercy:/etc/apache2# chown jj5:jj5 /var/lock/apache2 root@mercy:/etc/apache2# apache2ctl graceful
Easy-peasy!
Wait… that didn’t work. The problem was apache2ctl graceful didn’t pick up the new envvars file, this fixed it:
root@mercy:/etc/apache2# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
I learned about the Mailman check_perms program today. Basically it reports on permission issues with the mailman database, which is good because I was having trouble with the permissions on the mailman database. Basically email for a new list wasn’t being added to the web archive because the right permissions weren’t in place to allow the mailman process to write there. Anyway, with the help of /usr/lib/mailman/bin/check_perms and the judicious use of “chgrp -h list” and “chown -R -h www-data:list” I think I managed to fix everything up.
Update: I had a problem after applying the above changes whereby I couldn’t access the web archive for Mailman lists anymore. But… I figured out how to fix it. Basically I added the www-data to the list group with the following command (and then rebooted):
sudo adduser www-data list