From: Micah Carrick <email@...>
Date: 2007-06-05T15:37:13+09:00
Subject: Re: Newbie... help with permissions

Okay-- that was my bad. I wasn't filtering out '.' and '..'

Here's the code that works:

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

#! /usr/bin/env ruby

LOG_DIR = '/var/custom_logs/cache/'

def delete_if_old(file)
    t = (Time.new-(60*60*24*30)).strftime("%Y%m%d%H%M%S").to_i
    if file.to_i < t && file != '.' && file != '..'
        puts 'Deleting: '+file
        File.delete(LOG_DIR + file)
    end
end

Dir.foreach(LOG_DIR) { |f| delete_if_old f }
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------  


Now, if anybody has any suggestions as to coding conventions or things I 
should do differntly I'm all ears. Just because this works, doesn't mean 
I don't want to know how to do it the way ruby programmers 
conventionally would approach this.

- Micah Carrick

  Developer - http://www.micahcarrick.com
  GTK+ Forums - http://www.gtkforums.com



Micah Carrick wrote:
> Hey ya'll. I'm brand new to Ruby. Just a few hours into "Programming 
> Ruby" in fact. I'm loving ruby so far. I can't wait to get into some 
> GTK+ with ruby (since I do a lot of GTK+ stuff in C).
>
> I work best by solving real-world problems I have. So... an easy 
> one... deleting some log files on a client's server that are over 30 
> days old. These log files are named by date and time. So here's what I 
> have:
>
> #------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>
> #! /usr/bin/env ruby
>
> LOG_DIR = '/var/custom_logs/cache/'
>
> def delete_if_old(file)
>    t = (Time.new-(60*60*24*30)).strftime("%Y%m%d_%H%M%S").to_i
>    if file.to_i < t
>        File.delete(LOG_DIR + file)
>    end
> end
>
> Dir.foreach(LOG_DIR) { |f| delete_if_old f }
> #------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>
>
> So, when I replace the delete with a puts, I can see that all the 
> logic is fine. However, when I try to delete I get a permissions 
> error. I'm running the script as a user that does have access to the 
> directory and can delete those files. So, my assumption is that ruby 
> is NOT running as this user (the files can ONLY be deleted by the 
> user, not the group). With my php scripts on this server I use cgiwrap 
> to allow rwx access to my scripts.
>
> Is there anything I can do ruby-wise to allow this ruby script to 
> delete this file or do I have to change how the files are logged to 
> allow group access?
>
> The error is something like:
>
> ... in `delete': Operation not permitted - /var/custom_logs/cache/. 
> (Errno::EPERM)
>
>
> Any help is appreciated. I guess I'm just trying to understand how the 
> script is executed... as what user. May be more of a standard linux 
> permissions questions but still seems odd to me that the user that's 
> executing the script can delete the files but eh script itself cannot.
>