Magento users/permissions web server & group

Question

So a prior question led me to this, I am trying to use Magento2, (very frustrating)

I have a VPS, with all the proper things for Magento2 to run.

I can install it but have huge permissions issues, because the part of the documentation I cannot understand is the part about Put the Magento file system owner in the web server's group

http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/install-gde/prereq/apache-user.html#install-update-depend-user-add2group

when I do: [~]# egrep -i '^user|^group' /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

I get:

User nobody 
Group nobody 
UserDir 
public_html 
UserDir 
disabled 
UserDir disabled

and I don't know how to proceed from here.

Any help would be appreciated.

UPDATE### I have now completely started over... I wiped the host account clean and created a new one, starting from scratch, trying to follow the install directions from magento. everything is good up until the point where I have to: Put the Magento file system owner in the web server's group - I'm stuck there, since my user and group are both "nobody" I don't know what to do next, is says to do this THEN install magento... so I'm just stuck here now.

Answer 1

This command egrep -i '^user|^group' /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf is to help you to grab apache user and group automatically. But you can do it also manually:

Try to open your httpd.conf (using some editor, for example vim). And find this strings:

# User/Group: The name (or #number) of the user/group to run httpd as.
# It is usually good practice to create a dedicated user and group for
# running httpd, as with most system services.
#
User www
Group www

In this particular case my Apache user is www and Apache group is www.

Also from output of your command I can see that your apache user and group is nobody so you can proceed starting from http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/install-gde/prereq/apache-user.html#install-update-depend-user-add2group (just keep in mind that you need to use user and group nobody instead apache)

If you have any questions or need more details - just let me know. Thank you.

Answer 2

**1. Find the Primary / web Server group **

normally webserver user can be found with root login in SSH or terminal, to understand users and groups I found these articles helpful. https://www.linode.com/docs/tools-reference/linux-users-and-groups/ and https://www.tecmint.com/manage-users-and-groups-in-linux/

egrep -i '^user|^group' /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

on Centos will show user as "apache" on Ubuntu will show user ad "www-data"

you can change the user name in httpd.conf file

2. Create a new "magento_user"and put "magento_user" in webserver primary group

usermod -g apache magento_user

-g for primary group -G for additional secondary group

check groups

groups magento_user

Logout of ssh/terminal and

login back

restart apache server to take effect.

hope this helps