UsingWW: Install WeBWorK under OS X: what username operates apache?

Installation

Install WeBWorK under OS X: what username operates apache?

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I'm still trying to install WeBWork 2.8 under OS X (10.9.1). I've cloned webwork2 and pg from github and am now at the step of doing chown on the cloned files.

Instructions say to use for chown the username under which the web server operates. What exactly does that mean?

Note that I get:

$ ls -l httpd

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 388832 Nov 22 16:23 httpd

Re: Install WeBWorK under OS X: what username operates apache?

by Bill Farr - Wednesday, 26 February 2014, 2:44 PM

Murray,

The username and group under which the web server operates are set in the config file for your server, probably named "httpd.conf". Setting these to be other than root:admin is a good idea for security reasons. For example, the apache config file for the WW server at my institution has the following

lines in it.

User nobody

Group mawebwork

which set the user to "nobody" and the group to "mawebwork". Note that the user and group you use must both exist on your system.

Also, you should not change the ownership of the httpd binary from its default owner:group of root:admin as shown in the output of your ls -l command.

Bill Farr

WPI