[CentOS] files mysteriously changing ownership

Wed May 7 17:08:36 UTC 2014
Tim Dunphy <bluethundr at gmail.com>

We have a directory that holds the media for a website. We want that
directory owned by the apache user and group. But for some reason that
directory and all it's files keep reverting to being owned by a user
account and group.

[root at webservera ourwebsite]# ls -ld media/ drwxrwxr-x 163 user_a
user_a_group 143360 Apr 29 13:29 media/

I have even setup a cron job to automate the ownership of this file to the
right group to run every hour.

0 * * * * /bin/chown -R apache:apache /var/www/ourwebsite/media/

But every hour that directory keeps reverting to being owned by user_a and
user_a_group.

I've checked history files and crontabs for all users including root for
rsync's and chowns.

And I can find no evidence of what is causing this phenomenon of the
directory automatically changing its' owner and group.

How can I best investigate this in ways I haven't tried yet?

The host in question is a CentOS 5.7 host.


Thanks

Tim

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