Are 777 "proper" permissions for /var/www ?

[chlohr]

Hi,
I wonder how 777 can be proper permissions...
May I suggest deleting these lines and letting the user do it in his startup file if he really wants to:

Kathara/src/Kathara/manager/docker/DockerMachine.py

Line 57 in 6dcb780

"chmod -R 777 /var/www/*; fi",

Regards

[Skazza94]

Hi @chlohr,
we inherited this permissions from NetKit (the predecessor of Kathará).

I do not remember exactly the reason why 777 was necessary, probably because the webserver daemon require the files in /var/www to be owned by the correct user/group (www-data if I remember correctly). To avoid changing the user/group, we opted for giving full permissions on the files to the root user.

Perhaps @lorenzo93 can confirm my above reasoning.

Cheers,
Mariano.

[chlohr]

Hi,
Why doing these chmod in the Kathara tool, and not within the corresponding Dockerimage ?

Regards

[Skazza94]

Hi @chlohr,
the user might copy additional files into the /var/www folder at lab startup (by creating the corresponding folder for a certain device).

Therefore, we need to assign the 777 also to the newly-copied files, and this can be done only at runtime (after the device files are copied in the container). We can do it in the Dockerfile, but the 777 will be applied only to the files that are in the /var/www folder at build time.

Hope this answers your question.
Cheers,
Mariano.

[chlohr]

Hello,
If I understand well, this is for a specific need for a specific practical activity in mind with a specific lab ;-) Is so, this could be in the corresponding .startup script, isn't it ?

Regards,
Christophe.

[Skazza94]

Hi @chlohr,
depends on what is your specific need. We leave it as is in the Kathara code to avoid explicitly telling the students to force the permissions/user/group everytime in the .startup file.

However, if you want to change/reduce the permissions or the user/group, you can surely do it in the corresponding .startup file.

Hope this answers your question!

Mariano.