2

I create a sparsebundle and mount it as a virtual drive for each development project I work on. This works great until I needed to add encryption to one of the projects for added security of my client's files.

When encryption is on Apache returns a 403 forbidden message. I was able to get around it by changing apache to run under my user and group but that's very bad for the security of my macbook.

Is there a better way to allow permissions for apache to access my encrypted drive?

1
  • What permissions are in place for the mounted files? Sep 30, 2011 at 17:13

1 Answer 1

2

When you create an encrypted disk image in OS X, it defaults to creating the enclosed volume with restrictive permissions -- the owner (whoever mounted it) gets full access, while group members and others get no access. The web server normally runs as the _www system user, so it falls into the other/no access category. You can check this easily at the command line:

$ ls -l /Volumes
total 8
drwx------   6 gordon  staff        272 Sep 30 11:30 Encrypted Volume
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root    admin          1 Sep 27 17:11 Macintosh HD -> /

The "drwx------" means it's a directory ("d"); the owner (gordon) is allowed read, write, and execute access ("rwx"), the group (staff) is allowed no access ("---"); and others are allowed no access ("---").

The simple solution is to open up the volume permissions to allow group and others read-only access with chmod:

$ chmod go+rX /Volumes/Encrypted\ Volume
$ ls -l /Volumes
total 8
drwxr-xr-x   6 gordon  staff        272 Sep 30 11:30 Encrypted Volume
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root    admin          1 Sep 27 17:11 Macintosh HD -> /

It's possible (but unlikely) that individual directories and files inside the volume also have restrictive permissions set, in which case you'll need to adjust them similarly.

1
  • That was it. I should have checked the permissions sooner.
    – puppybits
    Oct 4, 2011 at 21:17

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .