Permissions on a UNIX web server

The install script (install.pl) should set up the permissions on your web server correctly. In the unlikely event that it hasn't work, or if they have been inadvertently changed, follow these instructions.

Generally, under UNIX the user that your web server runs as should own the directories and files for your web competition. This is “nobody” on most servers. The command for changing the owner of a file or directory should look something like:

chown nobody. tipping

Please check your operating system documentation if this does not work.

Each directory requires different file permissions to allow your web competition to run correctly. To check permissions once you have the scripts executing, go to the admin page (admin.cgi) and click on the check permissions link. This will check the permissions required for the web interface to upload files to the web front-end.

A list of directories and the required permissions follows. Replace any references to the tipping directory with the directory name that you specified for question 4 of install.pl. The chmod commands are run from the directories specified for questions 1 (<html>) and 3 (<cgi-bin>).

File/directory chmod command	Owner	Group	World	ls
`<cgi-bin>/tipping/*.cgi`	read execute	read	read	`r-x r-- r--`
`chmod 544 tipping/*.cgi`	read execute	read	read	`r-x r-- r--`
`<cgi-bin>/tipping/*.pl`	read write	read write	read	`rw- rw- r--`
`chmod 664 tipping/*.pl`	read write	read write	read	`rw- rw- r--`
`<cgi-bin>/tipping/data/`	read write execute	read execute	read execute	`rwx r-x r-x`
`chmod 755 tipping/data/`	read write execute	read execute	read execute	`rwx r-x r-x`
`<cgi-bin>/tipping/style/`	read write execute	read execute	read execute	`rwx r-x r-x`
`chmod 755 tipping/style/`	read write execute	read execute	read execute	`rwx r-x r-x`
`<html>/tipping/`	read write execute	read execute	read execute	`rwx r-x r-x`
`chmod 755 tipping/`	read write execute	read execute	read execute	`rwx r-x r-x`
`<html>/tipping/reports`	read write execute	read execute	read execute	`rwx r-x r-x`
`chmod 755 tipping/reports/`	read write execute	read execute	read execute	`rwx r-x r-x`
`<html>/tipping/images`	read write execute	read execute	read execute	`rwx r-x r-x`
`chmod 755 tipping/images/`	read write execute	read execute	read execute	`rwx r-x r-x`

In some installations, you may need to decrease the rights for the cgi scripts to 744 (read, write,execute;read;read) to get the scripts to run correctly.