MacOS – Run Node commands for _www user

apachemacmacos

I've installed NodeJS for all users on my Mac and when I do a whoami in the terminal it says 'cameron' and I can access node, npm, and grunt globally.

However when I try and run these from PHP e.g. exec('npm install'); I can't run them because they don't exist! Doing a whoami in the PHP reveals that I'm running the website as _www which isn't an actual user on the Mac…

So basically how can I install Node for _www? So I can run these commands from PHP.

Best Answer

This fixes it (after changing apache to run as the user who has node or by giving access to _www).

putenv('PATH=' . getenv('PATH') . ':/usr/local/bin');

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How to enable ssh login for _www user

The _www user is designed to never have a shell and many of the user attributes needed for ssh to run are missing. Once you log in as any other admin user, you can easily sudo over to user _www to get file permissions correct.

mac:~ me$ dscl . -read /Users/_www
AppleMetaNodeLocation: /Local/Default
GeneratedUID: FFFFEEEE-DDDD-CCCC-BBBB-AAAA00000046
NFSHomeDirectory: /Library/WebServer
Password: *
PrimaryGroupID: 70
RealName:
 World Wide Web Server
RecordName: _www www
RecordType: dsRecTypeStandard:Users
UniqueID: 70
UserShell: /usr/bin/false

mac:~ me$ sudo -u _www -s
Password:
bash-3.2$ id
uid=70(_www) gid=70(_www) groups=70(_www),61(localaccounts),12(everyone)

You can compare with a real user to see the missing attributes. If you want to hack, you could try making the NFSHomeDirectory writable and editing the shell - but that would leave all sorts of user files in /Library/Webserver - and your custom mods might get wiped out each update or cause unintended effects down the road.

Any reasons why you don't just create a apache admin user with a UID less than 500 so that it won't show in the log in screen as a normal user?

(or simply use a normal user to ssh in before using sudo to become _www)?

It's a lot less work and more secure. _www is intentionally placed in a sandboxbox to reduce the chance that web browsing does bad things to a running mac.

MacOS Terminal Commands Not Found – Troubleshooting Guide for Mac OSX

$PATH should contain these folders: /usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin.

Try editing ~/.bash_profile, ~/.profile, or ~/.bash_login (with for example /usr/bin/open ~/.bash_profile -a TextEdit) and commenting out any lines that modify the path.

If that works, you can add a line like export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH to ~/.bash_profile.

Best Answer

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How to enable ssh login for _www user

MacOS Terminal Commands Not Found – Troubleshooting Guide for Mac OSX

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