[smokeping-users] Permissions script idea

[Gregory Sloop]

Smokeping usage and install problems:
The problems boil down to;
1) Smokeping itself [or more clearly, the user smokeping is running as - and remember it may run as root at the CLI, but as something different when started by the system] can't write to the RRDs or the directory where the RRD's are to be stored. 
2) The web-server can't *read* the RRD's because it doesn't have rights.
 
[far less common, but the same base issue]
3) In master/slave setups - the slaves [via the web-server] can't write to the RRD's - because the web-server doesn't have rights to the RRDs.
 
These errors are so common, ti would be nice to have a small script that would run a quick audit/check on all permissions!
 
I have an install that ran fine for years, and then on a system & Tomcat upgrade now has permissions problems - .cgi access permissions denied.

I don't know if it would even be possible to do, given all the variances between distros etc. [Some using systemd some not, etc.]

The script would have to determine what user the webserver [there might be more than one installed] was running as, look in the smokeping config, see what RRD's exist in the config, and then go see if it could access the files as that user. [And what if the files hadn't been created yet?]

It would be perhaps easier to do this for the smokeping user - but even then it would have to look at systemd data to see who smokeping was running as and do those same checks.
I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to start to write such a script.

Seems like a pretty involved "small" script, IMO. :)
It *would* be cool though. 
[I'd like a pony too, as long as we're wishing!]

One would hope that the kinds of people who would run smokeping [namely sysadmins] would have enough skill to find their way through this problem. [Though, obviously that's not so much the case - so perhaps I'm tilting at windmills.]

-Greg
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