Question

How to use Github hooks when you disabled the root user

For security reasons, I disabled the root user and created a new user to use SSH.

When I use rsync, I rsync to the /home/my-name/my-dir directory and then mv to the /var/www/html/my-dir director, then used sudo chown -R www-data:www-data my-dir.

I’d like to create a Github hook that when I push to the repo, pulls the repo to my droplet.

Q1. Should I pull to /home/my-name/my-dir and them moved to the /var/www/html/my-dir and use chown command to change the owner?

Q2. Is there any tutorial how to set this up?

Thank you.


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Bobby Iliev
Site Moderator
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April 14, 2021
Accepted Answer

Hi there,

What I could suggest is allowing your non-root user to run this one specific command with sudo without being prompted for a password.

You can configure that you can change the sudoers file on your server. The correct way to make changes to the sudoers file is by using the following command:

sudo visudo

At the bottom of the file add the following:

your_user_here ALL = NOPASSWD: /bin/chown -R www-data\:www-data /path/to/your-dir

Then save and exit. After that when you run sudo /bin/chown -R www-data\:www-data /path/to/your-dir with your non-user you will not be prompted for your sudo password.

Hope that this helps. Regards, Bobby

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