SimpleDesk Mod installation is failing

[jetberrocal]

What if I add the www-data user to the root group?

Then I put back the folders/files to chown root:root

This way all the Apache instances will have write access to the folders/files
(The root Instance and the www-data instances)

I tried this with chmod 0775 on all folders/files but system says the folders are not writable.

Like the user www-data is not recognized as part of the root group

[Gruffen]

I don't get why you have things running as root.

Here's why: if the web files are owned by root, the webserver pretty much as to run as root. Now let's say Apache has a vulnerability - it does happen. Now your ENTIRE SERVER can be compromised.

[jetberrocal]

I don't get why you have things running as root.

Here's why: if the web files are owned by root, the webserver pretty much as to run as root. Now let's say Apache has a vulnerability - it does happen. Now your ENTIRE SERVER can be compromised.

Apache server starts at boot one instance that opens and binds the port 80 which is a root port, then answers requests opening instances under www-data.  I think this is the default behavior.    That is why the ps -ef output shows Apache2 running under root and the others running under www-data.

I do not know how to make it start all instances under www-data, binding Apache to port 80 at boot.

How do you do it?

[Gruffen]

That's how I have it; root is required to open port 80. What was concerning me is that if the files Apache is accessing are owned by root, all the *children* normally have to be root too, not www-data, which suggested to me the forking and reassigning of user id weren't happening.

[jetberrocal]

That's how I have it; root is required to open port 80. What was concerning me is that if the files Apache is accessing are owned by root, all the *children* normally have to be root too, not www-data, which suggested to me the forking and reassigning of user id weren't happening.

On the internet, I saw there is a umask, setgid and setid configurations besides the chmod and chown basic stuff.
What is your forum folders/files setting, so I can make mine the same.

I know that setgid and setid can be set with chmod, but I do not know how to set the umask.

[jetberrocal]

Eureka!!!

Found at least one security scheme that works.

• Change the ownership of everything under /user/share/joomla15/forum to www-data:root :
  chown -R www-data:root /user/share/joomla15/forum ## -R = recursive
  
• 
  Change the permissions of all the folders to 2775:
  chmod 2775 /user/share/joomla15/forum -R ## 2=set group id, Note that the forum root folder chmod is 775 not 755
  OR
  find /usr/share/joomla15/forum -type d -exec chmod 2755 {} \; ## Selective to only the folders, Note that subfolder are 755
  
• 
  Change all the files to 0664:
  find /usr/share/joomla15/forum -type f -exec chmod 0664 {} \; ## Selective to only the files
  
• 
  Change the umask for your users to 0002:
  The umask controls the default file creation permissions, 0002 means files will have 664 and directories 775. Setting this (by editing the umask line at the bottom of /etc/profile in my case) means files created by www-data will be writable by other users in the root-group without needing to chmod them.  Usually the system default is 0022.
  
• 
  Reboot the system to make the umask setting to take effect, if changed.
  

Now install the mod as usual, and activate (Core Features should add the SD (SimpleDesk) Icon/Settings)

Thank you (Arantor) for your Help,

Jose