Magento 1.7 – Recommended Permissions for /var and /media

I'm working on a solution that feels right, but this is by no means authoritative. I'd love to get feedback or questions. Here it is:

The setup involves two users:

• The deploy user in the deploy group: the user who writes to the server during deployments via rsync/SSH.
• The apache user in the apache group: the user that Apache runs Magento as.

The general philosophy is to have the entire Magento directory chowned as deploy:apache and have the folders that require operational write access be group-writable. Step-by-step that should get you there:

1. As root, create the virtual host's HTTP root, say, /var/www/html and chown it as deploy:apache, setting the setgid sticky bit:

   mkdir /var/www/html
   chown deploy:apache /var/www/html
   chmod g+s /var/www/html
   

2. Deploy the Magento code via rsync/SSH using the deploy user. All files and folders should now be owned deploy:apache.

3. As the deploy user, set /var and /media to group-writable.

   chmod g+w /var/www/html/var
   chmod g+w /var/www/html/media
   

4. Remove umask(0) in the Magento code to use the OS's default 022 or set explicitly to umask(022).

5. New temp files and folders should be owned by apache:apache and be 755 or 644.
6. Your setup is good and shouldn't require additional actions during future deploys.

This approach is consistent with the Magento wiki article that recommends the group permissions and fleshes it out a bit. It also seems to be rather close to what this gist by svenvarkel I found does. I see its advantages over the approach to setting the files as owned by the Apache user in that that approach requires you to use the Apache user to deploy and depending on implementation, it either requires constant toggling of write permissions for deployments or leaves the core writable by the Apache user.

I'd love to receive comments or critiques on my proposed approach.

TLDR; version of why Magento gives those instructions: you want things to be writable during installation (700 directories and 600 files), then afterwards assign ownership to the web server running user and restrictive permissions (500 directories, 400 files) that allow read only except for media/ and var/ directories.

This will work on a server that has been set up specifically with security in mind. Web servers can have a lot of variation in their setup especially shared hosts.

Your system sounds like it needs group and/or global read permissions for the web server to read your login user owned files. Check to see who owns the var/cache/ sub folders and the files they contain, you probably will find it's different.

From the question, you didn't get to the next step. They then have the After Installation settings which are even more restrictive.

Running recommendation is:

500 for directories
400 for files
for media/ and var/
700 for directories
600 for files. 

The key to understanding all this is the need to know the server user

On a dedicated server, in the instructions they tell you how to find the server user by checking the apache2.conf or httpd.conf file for the User config line.

Typically, this will be something like nobody, www-data

And so with this bit of information on a dedicated server you then assign all directories and files to be owned by the server user

chown -R {web-server-user-name-here} .

On a hosted system, if you're using Apache MPM-ITK or litespeed, the web server will run with your login name as the server user.

Once the ownership is set properly then you change all the directories and files as follows:

find . -type f -exec chmod 400 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 500 {} \; 
find var/ -type f -exec chmod 600 {} \; 
find media/ -type f -exec chmod 600 {} \;
find var/ -type d -exec chmod 700 {} \; 
find media/ -type d -exec chmod 700 {} \;
chmod 700 includes
chmod 600 includes/config.php

Now comes the massive headache part. Any time you upload files you no longer have write permissions except where you have allowed them (var/, media/) so every time you want to do maintenance outside these folders, you must change everything back by:

find . -type d -exec chmod 700 {} \;
find . -type f -exec chmod 600 {} \;

And on the dedicated server, also probably change ownership to the login user name so you will have permission to write stuff.

Also, if you used Magento Connect (on dedicated server, leave ownership as the web server user), anything it installs will be given 777 permissions.

Because you have to remember to undo and redo the process every time you change something, or are running on a system where the web server needs group/global read permissions, the following permissions have probably become the defacto standard among lesser technically skilled website owners:

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
chmod o+w var app/etc
chmod 550 mage
chmod -R o+w media