Script to change userid for files/folders on Apache?

barcsdad

I have an instance where I am creating a new folder (giving it 777 permissions), then grabbing an existing folder's contents and copying it into the newly created folder. This all works fine and dandy. However, once completed, the new folder and its contents cannot be deleted or changed because their "userid" and "group" are set to "Apache". The only way I've been able to change this is to login as root to the server and do it through the command line. Is there some sort of PHP script which could do this for me?

Marty

jerdo

Unfortunately no. PHP is usually setup to run as the same user as your webserver, so that it doesn't have too many permissions and can't mess too much up. You could try writing a perl script that changes ownership and call it from your php script after the files have been copied.

barcsdad

Thanks for the info. I'll look into the Perl suggestion. Maybe this could be handled by an .htaccess file as well?

Marty

jerdo

I don't think that can be done with .htaccess, but I'm not positive.

daveyboy

Who can't delete them?
Apache should be able to delete its own files, but user "roger" obviously can't, unless permissions are set to 0777 / 0666. Sounds like your permissions are screwed on the files in the directory. Writing a PHP script to delete files is not so difficult, but if you just want to nuke the lot, "system('rm -rf /path/to/be/nuked');" is the simplest to type.

Otherwise, try this:

/**
* Recursively delete directory $d
*
* @access public
* @param string $path Path to directory
* @return Boolean
*/
function deltree( $path )
{
	if ( !is_dir( $path ) ) {
		return 0;
	}
	$d = dir( $path );
	while ( $f = $d->read() ) {	
		if ( $f == "." || $f == ".." ) {
			continue;
		}
		$f = $path . '/' . $f;
		if ( is_dir( $f ) ) {
			if ( !deltree( $f ) ) {
				return 0;
			}
			rmdir( $f );
		} else {
			unlink( $f );
		}
	}
	rmdir( $path );
	return 1;
}