Bug 337636 – dev-db/couchdb-1.0.1-r1 needs write permissions to /etc/couchdb for admin-user management

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Dennis Schridde 2010-09-16 12:30:56 UTC]

Creating an admin user via http://localhost:5984/_utils/ is impossible if the user "couchdb" has no write access to /etc/couchdb.
When trying to create such a user, the webinterface will hang, constantly reloading the page, instead of creating the admin user.

Reproducible: Always

[Comment 1 Dirkjan Ochtman (RETIRED) 2010-09-27 10:53:52 UTC]

Does it really need write access to /etc/couchdb, or just to the ini files contained in that directory? If the latter, the current ebuild already sets it up like that (with rw-rw-r-- for /etc/couchdb/*.ini).

[Comment 2 Dennis Schridde 2010-09-27 13:28:54 UTC]

I installed dev-db/couchdb-1.0.1-r1 on Sep 16th, and the testsuite as well as the create-admin-user-thing did not work.

[Comment 3 Sam Jacobson 2010-10-19 13:01:10 UTC]

I encountered the same problem, and found my solution at the following URL before finding this bug:

http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Installing_on_Ubuntu

The following commands fix it:
# chown -R root:couchdb /etc/couchdb
# chmod 664 /etc/couchdb/*.ini
# chmod 775 /etc/couchdb/*.d

[Comment 4 Sam Jacobson 2010-10-19 13:35:53 UTC]

Created attachment 251255 [details]
dev-db/couchdb-1.0.1-r2.ebuild

I've found the bug in the ebuild (see following patch). I think the problem is that the wildcard expansion on fowners and fperms doesn't work because those files aren't really in /etc/couchdb at that point in src_install (they're in ${D}), and it's usually the shell that handles wildcard expansion. This works (and fixes the reported bug), but I don't know if it's the best way.

-	fowners root:couchdb /etc/couchdb/*.ini
-	fperms 660 /etc/couchdb/*.ini
+	fowners root:couchdb /etc/couchdb/local.ini
+	fowners root:couchdb /etc/couchdb/default.ini
+	fperms 660 /etc/couchdb/local.ini
+	fperms 660 /etc/couchdb/default.ini

[Comment 5 Dirkjan Ochtman (RETIRED) 2010-10-19 13:40:37 UTC]

Thanks for finding that! I think there's probably a better solution, let me ask around.

[Comment 6 Dennis Schridde 2010-10-19 13:54:27 UTC]

(In reply to comment #4)
> -       fowners root:couchdb /etc/couchdb/*.ini
> -       fperms 660 /etc/couchdb/*.ini
> +       fowners root:couchdb /etc/couchdb/local.ini
> +       fowners root:couchdb /etc/couchdb/default.ini
> +       fperms 660 /etc/couchdb/local.ini
> +       fperms 660 /etc/couchdb/default.ini
Maybe like this?
for file in "${D}"/etc/couchdb/*.ini ; do
  fowners root:couchdb ${file#${D}}
  fperms 660 ${file#${D}}
done

[Comment 7 Dirkjan Ochtman (RETIRED) 2010-10-27 08:59:14 UTC]

This should be fixed in the r2 that's in the tree now, please check.