Description

The 1.9.3 README.migration says:

  a) First switch to the user of your data directory (www-data normally):
      e. g. sudo -u www-data sh
      or su www-data

However most systems should not allow the webserver user (www-data for Debian or apache for RH) to login, and so this will fail. Better instructions would be to run the command as root and then afterwards run chmod -R apache:apache data (for example).

Steps to reproduce

1. do this...

On a RHEL 6 box type: su apache

You will not get a shell.

Example

See steps to reproduce above.

Component selection

• general

Details

/etc/passwd has:

apache:x:48:48:Apache:/var/www:/sbin/nologin

Workaround

See description.

Discussion

You could use sudo to run the necessary commands as that user. I also wonder whether more use of ACLs wouldn't be appropriate when setting up Moin, just to avoid having to change file ownership, even though ACLs are typically badly documented on various systems. I support ACLs to an extent in moinsetup. -- PaulBoddie 2012-02-07 23:52:41

su -s /bin/sh www-data does the job. -- EugeneSyromyatnikov 2012-02-08 06:47:09

If the whole point is to get the user/group right then it's worth considering being explicit and setting the user/group with chown. chown provides a universal way to fix the problem no matter how it's caused. -- KarlPinc 2024-11-22 22:34:38

If one uses the moin cli interface on the server he want to do that as the owner of the instance. Of course the initial report is about migrate while the server process is stopped. There chown afterwards is also a valid option. But if you create users or pages or ... then you don't want to stop the instance because of owner conflicts.

Plan

• Priority:
• Assigned to:
• Status:

CategoryMoinMoinBug