[Moin-user] Wiki server ignoring ACLs *followup*

[Paul Boddie]

On Monday 14. March 2016 20.31.48 Chris Freemesser wrote:
> On 3/11/16 4:09 PM, Paul Boddie wrote:
> > It's a bit baffling, really. Maybe creating a separate test instance on
> > your server with the basic elements of the desired configuration might
> > help.
> 
> I think I found the problem.  I migrated one of my existing instances to
> the test server I set up on Friday, and did not experience the right
> problems I was seeing on my problematic server.
> 
> Thinking back about something you mentioned regarding it possibly being a
> cache problem, I returned to my problematic server and simply deleted the
> entire cache folder for one of my instances.  Created a replacement folder
> for it, assigned ownership of it to "www-data", then ran a "maint
> cleancache" command on the instance.  After doing this, I then had to
> again reassign ownership rights for the entire cache folder to "www-data".
>  I think this may be an issue unique to how TurnKey Linux works...the
> subfolders within the cache folder that were recreated had "root"
> ownership for some reason, and the server doesn't seem to like that.

I often find file ownership to be a significant problem when performing 
maintenance tasks, assuming that the maintenance command actually functions 
correctly. I therefore find myself running some of these commands using sudo 
like this...

sudo -u www-data moin ...

(In fact, I use a helper script called moinsetup.py that I wrote to do common 
configuration tasks, and it is often the case that I run that instead of moin 
directly in the above way.)

> However, once rights were reassigned, now the ACLs work properly.  Go
> figure.
> 
> The location of the cache folder on this server is different than my old
> server, and I suspect I copied the cache files to the new location when I
> first migrated the instances.  Looks like that isn't a good thing to do.

I don't have an overview of what kind of location-sensitive information might 
be found in those files, but maybe it has an influence.

> I'm going to try this fix for all of my wiki instances tomorrow, so fingers
> crossed it works for all of those as well.
> 
> Thanks again for the help!  I doubt I wouldn't have found this if you
> hadn't put the bug about the cache in my ear.

Not a problem! The one thing I often found problematic and remedied only by 
full-on deletion at the filesystem level was the Xapian search support. There 
would be the annoying creation of lock files despite nothing actually getting 
re-indexed, and then Moin wouldn't manage to update the indexes. Various 
maintenance tasks would also "half fail" because these spurious locks would 
still be around.

Again, digging into this stuff is another nagging thing lurking in the 
background that one day might need get proper attention.

Paul