During a Discourse upgrade, Peter_Backgren saw a message about app.yml being “world-readable” and was concerned about its security implications. He was able to find the solution to secure the file by running chmod o-rwx containers/app.yml. Jonathan5 found the original topic discussing this issue on the Meta Discourse forum. RGJ clarified that “world-readable” is a Unix term meaning the file is accessible to all users on the system, not worldwide. Peter_Backgren acknowledged the clarification, noting that a less technical term might be helpful to avoid confusion.
Did my half-yearly upgrade (which went smooth for once, just the usual clearing old containers because of disc space)…
But at the beginning I saw some message about app.yml being far too visible (app.yml visible worldwide) and a command to fix it with.
Of course upgrading is long enough to scroll that message past any buffers and google is your friend (or the search here) isn’t helpful this time. Trying to guess which log file the info might be in… uhum.
Pretty certain someone here says tada in about two seconds though but in the end I just run the thing again to see the message even if the forum is down for another few minutes. So for reference:
chmod o-rwx containers/app.yml
And as an improvement I really would love to see in *nix logging… any processing that takes several pages should always END with a message saying (the operation performed was logged into xxxx.log).
“world readable” is a Unix term which means that all users on your system can access the file. It does not mean “worldwide” as in “everyone on the planet”.
In most Discourse installations, there is only one user (you) so this does not really matter.
@gabenp maybe it’s a good idea to use a less technical term here. It causes a bit of panic every now and then.
Ah, so long since I did *nix only I tend to forget things. Much more worried about what my web servers shine through by mistake… there I would not like to see the term worldwide .
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