How should I set filesystem access modes?

How should I set access modes? I have no privileges and cannot chown to another user. I don't see that it should be needed if I set up the ACL to give access to webservers. But whatever I do the pages are very ugly (which I believe is because of access problems). Perhaps the scripts explicitly check for the standard linux ownership and privilege? If so, can this be switched off so they just (correctly, in this case) assume they can access these directories?

Answer

In general, the webserver user has to be able to read everything under your installation, and write files under the working, pub and data directories. If you use configure from the web browser to install extensions, then all files under the installation must be writable by the webserver user.

The only script that explicitly checks access modes is configure. In normal use, linux access modes are set (using chmod), but not checked.

If you are having access problems that are making your pages ugly it is more likely to be a problem with Apache, rather than filesystem or Foswiki. Check your web server logs (error and access)