Question

I have installed TWiki on a webhost. I verify that cron is running mailnotify. I am having it produce a log. The log indicates that there have been no changes since Sep 4, 2003. I have made changes since that time. I look at the data directory and find that the timestamp on the .changes file is indeed Sep 5. I look at the file and see that a new page that I added this morning is listed.

I cannot figure out why mailnotify is not seeing these changes. I recall getting an email with changes, but can't recall if that was yesterday or the day before. I installed this two days ago.

ownership on all files is the user at the site. Everything seems to be working except that the changes are not being found by mailnotify.

testenv shows that the ownership needs to be changed on locks, but they are set to user which they should be. There are no errors listed.

I submitted this by form earlier as TWikiGuest and don't see it; so I am resubmitting.

Thanks, Anita

I went back and ran the changes script and see that the last thing listed there is also Sep 4 20:53. -- AnitaLewis - 05 Sep 2003

More Info:

I checked the changes in individual Webs and all are working. I noticed that the last change in the User Web was the same date and time as the last thing noted when I run the change script from the bin directory.

I then made a change on a page in the User Web. Then when I run the changes script, the change shows up. mailnotify finds it and mails it.

For some reason, change in the User Web is being found while changes in the TWiki Web and in my created Web called BLT, are not being found. This sounds like a permission problem. I will look into that some more. -- AnitaLewis - 05 Sep 2003

The new files that I have made on the Web have different permissions and I think this might be the problem.

QuickTwikiHowTo.txt 644 QuickTwikiHowTo.txt,v is 444

I am using authentication for viewing files. Could that be causing this?

There is an .htaccess file in each data directory requiring viewauth to have a valid-user. The data and template directories are in a separate directory and not in public_html. I have the bin files in public_html/cgi/twiki. The other files are in public_html/twiki. -- AnitaLewis - 05 Sep 2003

I found out that changing the permissions on the files to 755 for .txt files and 655 for .txt,v files makes the process work. There is a problem with that, though. I can change them, but if I make a new page or Web, the permissions are wrong on those files. I see that this is how files get written in our /home directory on the webhost. I'll get with them to find out how/if we can change that. Now I have a better idea what I'm looking for. -- AnitaLewis - 05 Sep 2003

I have TWiki installed on a server that I have root privilege on as well. On that server I created a Web and the files in it also are 644 and 444. I just did a revision on one of the pages and then mailnotify and it found the change and sent the mail. So apparently this permission thing is only relevant when one is using a Webhost and constrained to run cgi as user. Do you recommend that I run a script periodically to reset the permissions in the data directory or is there another way around this? Can you explain to me why the webhost environment would require the write permission and the server where cgi is run as root does not require write permission. Setting the permissions with a script really could miss some updates.

-- AnitaLewis - 07 Sep 2003

Environment

-- AnitaLewis - 05 Sep 2003

Answer

Just sort of pinging this in hopes of provoking someone with more knowledge than me to answer Anita's last questions:

Q: "Do you recommend that I run a script periodically to reset the permissions in the data directory or is there another way around this?"

A: My guess is that an alternate might be to set the umask appropriately. I'm not sure you'd have the ability to do that if you are not root, but presumably the "hoster" can.

Q: "Can you explain to me why the webhost environment would require the write permission and the server where cgi is run as root does not require write permission. Setting the permissions with a script really could miss some updates."

A: Hmm, just to clarify, do you mean that on the server where cgi is run as root, root does not have write permission on the twiki files? (The txt,v files have 444 permission vs 644 permission? Yes, I guess that's what you said.) I guess I have no clue to offer.

-- RandyKramer - 18 Sep 2003

This is a permission issue. Find out who the cgi user is (run testenv) and make sure that the web directories (twiki/data/Someweb) and files in it are writable by that user. E.g. set the web directory to 775 or 755.

There are two hidden files in each web directory, .changes and .mailnotify. The former one needs to be writable by the cgi user, e.g. set it to 664 or 644, the latter one needs to be writable by the user where you have the cron job for the mailnotify script running (ideally the same user like the cgi user.)

-- PeterThoeny - 25 Sep 2003