in reply to I need a user just for Perl script run from web browsers

Your description has not given me a clear picture yet of what it is you are facing, but the following possibilities come to mind--perhaps they will have some value, if nothing more than to expand your ideas.

You've said that Sally1 doesn't have permission to "write" or "create" files. Does "Johnny1" have these permissions? If so, it would seem that's an inequality that you need to look at right there. If Johnny1 can do something that Sally1 cannot, there must certainly be a difference between their permissions. Have you checked the privileges of these users on the linux platform itself (not mediated by apache)? For example, look into /etc/sudoers and see if any of the inclusions would apply to Johnny1 and not to Sally1.

# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%sudo    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

[download]

Is Johnny1 a member of root, admin, or sudo?

Look at /etc/group and scan the list to see any place where Johnny1 occurs (www-data?), without also having Sally1.

And if you do not have root privileges yourself and these files are inaccessible, you may need to look elsewhere for a solution, and/or contact your server admin for support.

Apache can be very troublesome with minor details, in my experience.

Blessings,

~Polyglot~

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Re^2: I need a user just for Perl script run from web browsers
by bartender1382 (Beadle) on Apr 29, 2022 at 17:10 UTC
    That's my problem, I am Johnny1, and I am then admin. An admin with very little experience in this field. Who set this server up with that name, Johnny1.
     
    So while I can create users, and make directories have passwords, etc. etc. it seems when I created Sally1, that user didn't have everything needed. Even though I made Sally1 part of www-data, added her to the sudo group, etc. etc.
     
    I even tried making all the paths that the perl scripts would write to owned by Sally1, etc. etc.
     
    And even with all that, when I set the enviers file so that Perl scripts are run by Sally1, those scripts the need to write to specific paths, fail at that line, even when Sally1 is listen as the owner.
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      I guess your lack of experience makes it difficult for you to find reasonable steps to narrow down the error. So let me take some shots into the blue...

      • The group www-data seems to point to an Debian or Ubuntu system. Correct? This matters because different systems have different configuration defaults.
      • ...those scripts the need to write to specific paths... Does it happen only for some paths? What are the permissions for these paths? Even the owner can't write files without a write permission!
      • Can the Perl scripts write to /tmp? If yes: What are the ownership and permissions of the files created by the script?
      • Can you login as Sally1 and write to said specific paths or does that fail, too? (NERDVANA suggested a similar approach)
      • Have you inspected your web server's error log? Are there warnings or errors regarding your scripts or about your configuration?
      • Do you have AppArmor or SeLinux policies in place? (Admittedly that's pretty far-fetched, but those could cause such behaviour)
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        Problem solved!

        Someone's comment made me think differently, yes I made sure to check their ++ button, and others who also gave me ideas,

        I logged in command line as Sally1 and tried:

        ls -trl > text.txt

        And that's when went back to checking group permissions for www-data, of which Sally1 was already part of.

        Then I realized that when I went to change the group's permission I was leaving out the g+

        I realize for security reasons such a "thing" doesn't exist, but it would be great if you could copy one user's permissions to another in one fell swoop.

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