OT: Local Perl - CGI

lanta has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

For a CGI script, I need to use Perl installed in a user directory. The webserver user("apache" in my case) has access to the directory( /home/some_user/perl/bin ) and can stat the files in that location from the command line. While running the script the user is not able to stat the directory. I wrote the following script to test

#!/bin/bash

echo Content-type: text/plain
echo ""

echo "I am "
whoami
stat /home/some_user
[download]

and get the following result

I am
Apache
stat: cannot stat '/home/some_user': Permission denied.
[download]

Any ideas?

Environment

CGI(not mod_perl)
Redhat 2.6.32
Apache 2.2.15
[download]

Comment on OT: Local Perl - CGI - Apache. Select or Download Code

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Re: OT: Local Perl - CGI - Apache. by stevieb (Canon) on Nov 24, 2015 at 23:46 UTC
This doesn't appear to be a Perl question... you haven't shown any Perl code... you've shown an inability for your web service user to access a directory structure. You say you can `stat` the directory, but your example shows you can't. (If you can from the CLI, what user are you running the command as (I suspect `root`), and what is the command?) If your `bash` script can't `stat` a file as a user, why would you think this is a perl problem? Please post what `sudo -u apache ls -la /home/some_user` says, as well as `sudo -u apache ls -la /home \| grep some_user`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: OT: Local Perl - CGI - Apache. by lanta (Sexton) on Nov 25, 2015 at 00:25 UTC
stevieb, thanks for your time. I understand that this is not a perl question. I need to use the perl interpreter installed in ~some_user, so was hoping some one here might have some config experience with it. From the CLI, as apache, I can stat /home/some_user, but not thru the CGI, running under apache. # su - apache $ stat /home File: `/home' Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 2097153 Links: 5 Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ roo +t) Access: 2015-11-24 18:30:06.243730150 -0500 Modify: 2014-10-07 22:46:09.353475060 -0400 Change: 2014-10-07 22:46:09.353475060 -0400 -bash-4.1$ [download] -bash-4.1$ stat /home/some_user File: `/home/some_user' Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 2187307 Links: 43 Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 508/ some_user) Gid: ( 508/ + some_user) Access: 2015-11-24 17:47:08.723747155 -0500 Modify: 2015-11-24 18:34:19.314602725 -0500 Change: 2015-11-24 18:55:24.365823666 -0500 [download] Once again, thanks in advance for all help	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: [OT] Apache cannot stat home dirs (was: OT: Local Perl - CGI - Apache.) by hippo (Archbishop) on Nov 25, 2015 at 09:24 UTC
Redhat 2.6.32 That sounds like RHEL 6 to me. In which case, have you set the httpd_enable_homedirs boolean? If you have, still take a look in the audit log to see if the actual reason for the stat failure is there. As mentioned by stevieb, this is nothing to do with Perl.	[reply]
Re^2: [OT] Apache cannot stat home dirs (was: OT: Local Perl - CGI - Apache.) by lanta (Sexton) on Dec 02, 2015 at 23:11 UTC
Thanks hippo. You pointed me in the right direction. Linux was running under SELinux, disabling that fixed the issue. Now, I can look into ways to make it work under SELinux. Regards, lanta.	[reply]