crontab rewalk not working

[Andy]

I unwittingly changed the ownership of files in the websinator directory but have since chown(ed) them back to the httpd daemon. The crontab is set to rewalk every morning but I get this error message:
003 Can't make dir /usr/local/apache/htdocs/webinator/_db: Permission denied
Can't open logfile "/usr/local/apache/htdocs/webinator/_db": Permission denied
Rewalking database


*****************************************************************
cron: The previous message is the standard output
and standard error of one of the cron commands.

[mark]

You also need to fix the ownership of the webinator directory itself so that the rewalk can create files/directories there.

[Andy]

I fixed the ownership of the webinator directory but still got the aforementioned error. I have gone through the entire webinator directory and sub directory and changed user and group ownership to the httpd daemon. I did a rewalk of the db and now the search engine doesn't work at all. When I looked at the error log I saw this:
000 Jul 24 10:48:03 /webinator/search:229: Could not connect to /usr/local/apach
e/htdocs/webinator/db in the function openntexis
000 Jul 24 10:48:03 /webinator/search:456: Could not open SYSTABLES in the funct
ion ddopen

[Kai]

Are you sure the user "httpd" is what your web server is actually running CGI programs as? Sometimes this is a different user than what the daemon itself starts as or is owned by.

Also make sure that the directories are read/write/executable (via chmod), and that all files are read/writable.

[mark]

The big key is that all related files always be owned by the same user and that all Webinator/Texis programs be run as that user.

If gw and texis are setuid, they should be setuid to the same user and all related files/directories should be owned by that user.

If they are not setuid all files/directories should be owned by the webserver user and you should always run gw as that user.