Re: [tlug] Who is www-data, and why do they want my CPU?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

Dave M G writes:

 > Even as root I can't seem to enter the directory.

Something is seriously wrong if root can't see it.  Are you sure
you're root?

What does ls -la say about it?

 > I know crontab is probably some regularly schedule program, but I can't 
 > see it if I type "crontab -e", so I don't know what it is.

Try becoming root then "su www-data" and "crontab -e".

 > What do you suppose is the deal here?

The user (more accurately, the user that represents the group) that
owns your web data is running a cronjob for some reason.  For example,
indexing the pages for search purposes, or rotating and compressing
log files.