Hi, We have a product that at the moment uses a combination of CGI and mod_perl. While in the future it will be totally ported to mod_perl, until we figure out exactly how we'd like to overcome the 'expat' issues we're stuck with a mixed-mode enviroment.
Here however is the current problem. The cgi script under a specific set of circumstances (signing up a new account) copies a directory using a fork to the system's cp command and they're created as user: apache group: apache. I'm not by nature a linux mod_perl programmer and thus I'm not totally up on the nuances of what I'm doing here. I needed a quick solution to copying a template directory to a user directory when a new user account was created, and since it happened only once during the user's process I figured a fork to cp was worth the performance hit for the simplicity it provided. Single line of code vs some directory recurison scheme. The problem is when I later try access the files or directories under either mod_perl or the cgi process the server returns an error unless I set the chmod to 777 on the files. This is obviously not good. I have done some looking into using $> before I write the file but I hadn't found anything about using this under mod_perl ... let alone mod_cgi ... except that generally it's a bad idea to setuid to root. um yeah ... I wasn't gonna do that ... I just didn't want to give the world 777 access to files that run under apache:apache. I also didn't want to follow bad with worse implimenetation wise. Is there a simple secure method for copying a directory from a template directory to a user directory and then giving access to the (new) user directory? Any other considerations here? Thanks -Chris ::who will be happy if someone even says "Go Read the Nautilis book ... it covers Recursion in depth"::
