Linux – create folder and files under User ownership in CakePHP

When I have to things from PHP that require root privileges on a system that has mod_php I usually write a small helper script to actually do the task. Then I use system() or proc_open() to call the script via sudo. You will need to configure your apache user account to be able to run that particular script with no password.

If the system has the cli version of php installed then you can write your helper script in PHP since it sounds like that is familiar to you.

/etc/sudoers looks like this:

Cmnd_Alias PHPHELPER=/path/helper-script 
www-data ALL=NOPASSWD: PHPHELPER

The advantage of doing this is that you can write a very tight and specific helper script that only performs one task, and you can add lots of good error checking to prevent badness. This minimizes the potential for a system compromise.

check your apache configurations, usually in /etc/apache2/ or /etc/httpd/ or /etc/apache, and look through the configuration for the directive User, if User is numeric 2016, that's just how it is set up.

do you know if the server is running with SELinux or any 'non-standard' configurations going on on it?

you can also do ps aux | grep apache (or grep httpd, mileage may vary), to see the user/userid that the service is running as. for example:

www-data 14549  0.0  1.0  23340  9864 ?        S    May17   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

shows me www-data is the user running apache2 on my site.

let us know what you find out.