how to properly install on server

[lee2sman]

Pardon this beginner-level question.

I'm created a small tilde server and a bit unsure the install process. Does botany get placed inside a shared directory that all users have access to? or is there some other system i should be setting up? Perhaps more explicit install instructions can be added to the README.md (I'd be happy to contribute if i knew the answer)

[Az-Neter]

Did you ever manage to figure this out? All I get when running this on my server is "Can't find direction to username" when I try to look at other gardens.

[lee2sman]

I did, but I have since closed that server as it was for a temporary group. I stupidly forgot to document my exact process, so I'm working from memory, but here is best of my knowledge:

1. create a botany user. maybe ~botanist
2. git clone this repo
3. make a shortcut that everyone on the server can run, such as creating a script file named botany in the /usr/bin/ path
4. The contents of this script is a single line that runs the botany.py script in the ~botany user's botany directory. So for example my script was /home/botanist/botany/botany.py
5. Make sure you've set permissions on botany.py so everyone can run it.

[lee2sman]

There's also a 6 year old unmerged PR with an install script worth reviewing: #23
As I don't have an active server I'm playing with now I can't test.

[Az-Neter]

I already did essentially this but using an alias instead.
The 'garden' section shows all the users, but it still cannot find them for visiting and watering.

[Az-Neter]

It seems setting permissions on the SQL database is the only part of that script I haven't done in some way or another.
I'll set those permissions up and hopefully that changes something 🤷

[lee2sman]

Ok, report back :)

[Az-Neter]

No luck.
I did break permissions and make it so no one can use botany in the meantime, so adjusting permissions on the SQL folder seems a pointless addition to the script when it was already part of the actual program to set the permissions to 777.

There's absolutely no information anywhere explaining how or why a user can access another users garden.
The initial script just vaguely comments the part that 'handles' it, assuming some function to exist that I cannot find.

Either the code is broken and missing something or my system has an edgecase configuration preventing this from working properly.

Every user on the system can run botany. We all show up in the garden.
We just can't visit anyone. Everything else works as intended.

[Az-Neter]

This is really stupid but I almost think I have to give other users access to oneanothers .botany folder within their ~/ ???
What an insane proposition if so, that's a lot of manual work.

[lee2sman]

Ok, yes confirming. I checked on ctrl-c.club to see if we have botany and we do and ran it and planted a seed! Output of ls -l ~/.botany for me is

-rw-rw-r-- 1 me me
when i run ls -l on another user's folder i get the exact same output.

[Az-Neter]

Oof. So I have to manually set everyone on my server to have rw access to every other users files...

I think I'd rather just completely remove this botnet from my server then 😂