Not require the "mediagoblin" user during install (or, other permissions solutions)

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Our present docs are presently very confusing because we suggest users make a "mediagoblin" user, but this isn't the same user that the web server runs as. Thus, people tend to run into permission issues. It would be easier for the user to run as www-data on Debian and similar machines, and whatever the equivalent is on Fedora/Red Hat/etc.

How to do this and not make it *more* confusing? Maybe we could have some way to have separate install pages for each distro but have them "build" from the same base? I'm not sure that's possible though.

Other solutions to help us avoid permision issues would also help.

[davidak]

since most users will have a server for their mediagoblin-instance, they are root on that system.
so they can install mediagoblin and chown it to the webserver-user on their system (www-data, ...).
the documentation can cover different systems at this point. i wouldn't make more than one page for installation instructions.

another possible case is a shared-hosting environment, but most hosters don't support python.
then the user is the same, the webserver uses to deliver content. nothing must be changed.

[Ben Sturmfels]

Marking as "small", since it will require some investigation of the default user on various mainstream distros, eg. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL/CentOS, plus perhaps some general explanation for "other".

[Ben Sturmfels]

The default Nginx web user on Fedora/CentOS is "nginx".