Here's a puzzler: --title req'd when run by root

[nimblebooks]

Here's a puzzler. I have a bash script that creates ebooks by running ebook-convert from the command line, either by the user or by root as result of a web form submission. It was working fine until I removed the --title option. Now it still works fine when run by the user, but the ebook-convert command fails when run by root as the result of the web form submit. As far as I can tell, the only difference is that I removed the --title option. When I put it back with a static --title=foo, both user and root work fine.

Any ideas?

[susan_cassidy]

Web servers typically don't run as root, so perhaps a file needs to be overwritten that is owned by root, or something? Can you su to the user that the web server runs as, and then try running the command from the command-line that the web form submission runs?

[nimblebooks]

changing the permissions on the source file did the job!

[nimblebooks]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

Web servers typically don't run as root, so perhaps a file needs to be overwritten that is owned by root, or something? Can you su to the user that the web server runs as, and then try running the command from the command-line that the web form submission runs?

yes, you're right, it was running as Apache's user. what you suggested would have worke.d Once I wrote the post above and realized that it had to be a permissions issue, I went back to the ebook-convert command line in my script and eyeballed each component until I realized which files Apache must be having trouble accessing.