[IPT] permission settings for IPT data directory

[Burke Chih-Jen Ko (GBIF)]

Dear IPT list members,

For people who sets up Tomcat & IPT on UNIX servers (Linux, BSDs), when there is something not working, and it seems you've followed the manual properly, sometimes it could be the permission that plagues.

But, what permission settings are right for IPT data directory? It depends on the user that is designated to run Tomcat.

In your shell, type

$ ps waux | grep tomcat

should reveal who is running Tomcat. So assuming the user is "tomcatuser," and user "tomcatuser" belongs to group "tomcatgroup," and the ownership of the IPT data directory (and it's child folders and files) should be

tomcatuser:tomcatgroup

Then, with mod 0775 of the IPT data directory, both of the tomcatuser and tomcatgroup have write permission, some issues about IPT settings or using the existing IPT directory will be resolved.

As to how the system assigns which user to run Tomcat, it is actually depended on whether Tomcat is set up as a daemon and used a non-root user, or, it's actually you firing up the ./startup.sh so Tomcat is running as the user you used to log in. Either way the IPT data directory should be owned by the user which runs Tomcat, so settings and modifications can be saved.

Hope this helps people who have troubles getting IPT behaves properly.

Cheers,

Burke

Informatics Liaison
GBIF Secretariat

Tel: +45 35 32 15 11
Fax: +45 35 32 14 80
E-mail: bko at gbif.org
Skype: burkeker
http://community.gbif.org/pg/profile/burkeker