Php – Fixed: Apache – PHP permissions to create / edit files and directories

apache-2.2chmodPHP

I have a server on rackspace clouds… Fedora 13, and I installed apache, mysql.

Now, I have a piece of code (PHP) that my web app uses a lot. It works on my local machine running XAMPP, but when I upload this code on my rackspace server, it doesn't work:

$myFile = "textfile.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("cant open");
$stringData = "CONTENT";
fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);

Really simple PHP code that should just work. However, it wont create the file, and if I upload textfile.txt file myself, and give the permissions myself to 0666 then it edits the file. However, this isn't ideal, since it still wont create new files (or directories) and chmoding each one by hand isn't feasible.

The owner of the file is root and the group is root

How do I make this work?

UPDATE – Fixed

I changed the owner to apache:apache doing: chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html

That seemed to work 🙂

Is there any security issues with that, or is that fine to have the user apache and the group apache?

Thanks!

Best Answer

Giving the apache user write access to your entire DocRoot is not ideal. I usually configure things a bit differently.

First I identify a place where the files will be written - this can be in the DocRoot, or it can be in a separate location that's brought in with an Alias configuration in apache.

I create a group (usually called www-pub) and add the apache user to it.

Then I do 

chown root:www-pub <directory>

and

chmod g+rwxs <directory>

which sets the setgid bit, meaning that any files or directories created under the top will have the same group as the parent directory, as well as being writable (and readable) by that group.

That way, you restrict where and what the apache user can get at, but still allow file creation and so forth in that area only.

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