Php – umask for www-data user running PHP on Ubuntu

apache-2.4file-permissionsPHPubuntu-14.04umask

Setting up a new webserver in Ubuntu 14.04 and trying to wrangle file permissions for PHP generated files.

By default, all the directories and files in /var/www are owned/grouped to www-admin. Directory permissions are rwxrwsr-x and file permissions are rw-rw-r--.

We then set the group on a limited number of directories to www-data – this is so that PHP (via Apache) can write log and cache files in this location.

However, I cannot get PHP to obey a umask of 0002, and so files generated by PHP are only writeable to the www-data user. This is a problem, since we use continuous integration, and some other cleanup processes.

So far, I have:

  • Set the umask to 0002 in /etc/pam.d/common-session
  • Set the umask to 0002 in /etc/pam.d/common-session-noninteractive
  • Set the umask to 0002 in /etc/profile
  • Set the umask to 0002 in /etc/apache2/envvars
  • Set the umask to 0002 in /etc/login.defs
  • Set the umask to 0002 for www-data in /etc/passwd using sudo chfn -o "umask=002" daemon_username

And I'm still stuck.

I've stopped/started the service, and even restarted the computer – no joy.

Best Answer

"umask 002" in /etc/apache2/envvars should work.

Take notice that Apache must be restarted by "service apache2 stop; service apache2 start" for taking effect, not by "service apache2 restart"!

See here if you need an more detailed sample: https://serverfault.com/a/384922/228027

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