problem with permissions

[GodSaveTheQueef]

So I have this external USB drive formatted as ext4 with standard file permissions in place, i.e.

wrxr-xr-x root root

but now uTorrent Server gives me a message stating "unable to save temp file" when I try to add a torrent to the queue.

I thought the user on my system running uTorrent Server was root, so now I am not sure. How do I check this? Any thoughts?

[lithopsian]

ps -ef|grep utserver

You should know who is running uTorrent since you must have started it, no? Normally it wouldn't be root. It isn't advisable to run as root since any exploit that might exist would then give access to your entire machine. Running as a normal user, in the unlikely event of an exploit then the hacker would be able to do much less damage.

[GodSaveTheQueef]

Right, I see that a user, not root, is running uTorrent, but now what do I do about the file permissions? Change the owner (chown) to that user? Or is there another way? Because I don't really want to give that particular user necessarily the ownership permissions of the USB drive.

[GodSaveTheQueef]

Okay. I changed ownership of all folders uTorrent server uses to the user "utorrent". But still I get the message "unable to save temp file" when I try to open a .torrent file.

Does uTorrent use some sort of temporary folder then? I am at loss here. My configuration looks like this:

Put new downloads in:

/media/external2/torrents/active/

Move completed downloads to:

/media/external2/torrents/completed/

Store .torrents in:

/media/external2/torrents/torrents/

Move .torrents for finished job to:

/media/external2/torrents/old/

Keep in mind this disk /media/external2/ is formatted as ext4, is this maybe the problem?

[mcdonald]

Okay. I changed ownership of all folders uTorrent server uses to the user "utorrent". But still I get the message "unable to save temp file" when I try to open a .torrent file.

Does uTorrent use some sort of temporary folder then?

Do you have enough space in /tmp? To use another directory, you can try specifying a value for the dir_temp_files setting in the utserver.conf configuration file.

[GodSaveTheQueef]

There should be enough space in /tmp, the system drive uses about 10% of total storage.

I've changed the utorrent.conf file and added the line

dir_temp_files: /media/external2/tmp

For the sake of clarity here is my complete utorrent.conf file

preferred_interface: eth0
ut_webui_port: 8080
token_auth_enable: true
admin_name: admin
ut_webui_dir: /etc/utserver/
dir_temp_files: /media/external2/tmp/

But it didn't work, I still get the message "unable to save temp file". Here's an overview of the permission on the disk /media/external2/

drwxr-xr-x 10 root     root  4096 2011-06-29 13:48 ./
drwxrwxrwx  6 root     root  4096 2011-06-22 13:15 ../
drwxr-xr-x  5 root     root  4096 2011-06-22 13:28 some_folder1/
drwx------  2 root     root 16384 2011-06-22 13:01 lost+found/
drwxr-xr-x 52 root     root  4096 2011-06-22 15:08 some_folder2/
drwxr-xr-x  3 mt-daapd root  4096 2011-06-22 15:09 some_folder3/
drwxr-xr-x  3 root     root  4096 2011-06-22 15:09 some_folder4/
drwxr-xr-x 10 root     root  4096 2011-06-22 21:46 some_folder5/
drwx------  2 utorrent root  4096 2011-06-27 20:12 tmp/
drwx------  7 utorrent root  4096 2011-06-22 22:18 torrents/

[mcdonald]

For the sake of clarity here is my complete utorrent.conf file

preferred_interface: eth0
ut_webui_port: 8080
token_auth_enable: true
admin_name: admin
ut_webui_dir: /etc/utserver/
dir_temp_files: /media/external2/tmp/

Try setting logmask: 0xffffffff to see if you get any additional information about the failure to save a temporary file, specifying the logfile argument on the command line if you need to.

But it didn't work, I still get the message "unable to save temp file". Here's an overview of the permission on the disk /media/external2/

drwxr-xr-x 10 root     root  4096 2011-06-29 13:48 ./
drwxrwxrwx  6 root     root  4096 2011-06-22 13:15 ../
drwxr-xr-x  5 root     root  4096 2011-06-22 13:28 some_folder1/
drwx------  2 root     root 16384 2011-06-22 13:01 lost+found/
drwxr-xr-x 52 root     root  4096 2011-06-22 15:08 some_folder2/
drwxr-xr-x  3 mt-daapd root  4096 2011-06-22 15:09 some_folder3/
drwxr-xr-x  3 root     root  4096 2011-06-22 15:09 some_folder4/
drwxr-xr-x 10 root     root  4096 2011-06-22 21:46 some_folder5/
drwx------  2 utorrent root  4096 2011-06-27 20:12 tmp/
drwx------  7 utorrent root  4096 2011-06-22 22:18 torrents/

What happens when you open the permissions on tmp to 770 or 777?