running as unprivileged user doesn't work as documented

[rotanid]

running ffmap-backend on Debian 8 as unprivileged user doesn't work like it is documented.
as far as i remember it was strange, with the solution from the readme, the alfred socket access wasn't possible most of the time, worked only once in a while

we solved it by

1. creating wrapper scripts that run batctl, batadv-vis, alfred-json via sudo
2. create sudo entries for these
3. change the PATH for the cronjob to include the directory containing the wrapper scripts
4. change backend.py to copy/use the parent environment variables, see tecff@15553b8 and tecff@a2a5fcb

maybe there's a better way, but the readme should be updated regarding this

[jplitza]

In what way "doesn't it work"? Error messages? Log entries?

[rotanid]

i had this problem back in november and worked hours to solve it.
sorry, i don't have the time and motivation to go through all this again, so i just shared what i still remember to help others experiencing the same.
i added a few details above that i can remember.

[rotanid]

i did some debugging and came to the following results:

• running the alfred master as "root:alfred" so the socket gets the correct group
• need to run "chmod g+w /var/run/alfred.sock"

the problem is that the last command isn't persistent...

so there's a simpler solution than the one i described above, but information in the README isn't enough to get ffmap-backend running as an unprivileged user

sidenote:
couldn't get alfred 2015.2 from jessie-backports to work at all, so i'm stuck with 2014.4 - freifunk pinneberg seems to have the same problem (but that's not the issue here imho, just additional information)

[jplitza]

Your side note may actually hint at what is the difference in our setups. How/wherefrom did you install alfred? Because I'm using the repository at debian.draic.info by @tcatm, and the version installed from there is automatically run as root:alfred and sets 660 on the socket.

[rotanid]

We're running 2014.4 from ffmuc/fpletz repository at the moment, but as the "more official" one in debians repositories also doesn't use root:alfred and 660 we should either work hard to change it there, too or (even better) change it so it doesn't need full root.
short term it should at least be noted that it relies on that specific build/package of alfred