Creating a file with fopen

[fxnut]

Hey guys, it's my first post here, and I'm hoping it'll be a simple question to answer. It's kind of server config related but it does pertain to PHP.

Basically I'm trying to do an fopen() to create a file, but my hosts web server (running Apache) won't let me. I get the same problem when I try to append to a file as well. So it seems obvious that I don't have write permissions to the directory.

The question therefore is how can I set the permissions for the directory? I've looked all through various PHP forums, articles etc. and they usually say to use a command like "chmod". The problem is that as far as I can see I don't have this command available to me. I've tried going through the ftp command line instead of WS_FTP and I still don't have any commands available to be able to modify permissions on a directory.

So can I use something like a ".htaccess" file instead to change this, or is there another way?

(btw, I'm on the virtual hosting service at Easily.co.uk if that helps you figure out what's going on)

Thanks a lot :-)

Andy

[barand]

In WS-FTP if you right click a folder you get a chmod option (at least if nix host)

Also see [man]chmod[/man]

hth

[fxnut]

Thanks Barand, that's partially solved it!

I managed to change the permissions so that instead of reading...

drwxr-sr-x

so that it now reads

drwxr--rwx

and it now means that my php can write to that directory. Cool!

BUT...
a) does this pose a security risk in anyway? Does it mean that anyone with a php script on another website can write information into that directory, or use any other means to upload files there and/or cause havok?

b) What happened to the 's' flag (I think it's called the sticky flag)? Does this present any problems, and can I re-set it with WS_FTP or using some other method?

c) I don't understand why I can't use a chmod command using the ftp command line in some way. Is there some way of doing this, cause then I could set the sticky flag and other access rights myself without relying on WS_FTP.

Andy

[fxnut]

Actually, I just thought...

Would an acceptable way of dealing with this be to just use PHP's "chmod" whenever I needed to write to that directory, and then to set it back after?

Or would this be frowned upon, just because of possible 'thrashing' of protection bits.

Also, since I don't know much about the threading side of how PHP runs, wouldn't it be possible for another browser to clear write permissions just as someone else is about to try write to the directory, thereby causing an invalid file access?

(sorry, a lot of questions in the past two posts, but it really would clear a lot of things up!!)

Regards

Andy

[superwormy]

I doubt that PHP will have the permissions to chmod() the file / folder... because it didnt have permission to write to the file you already said... so I don't think that's an option.

[fxnut]

Yeah thanks, you're right about that superwormy, I just tried it.

Still need answers to my second post though (parts a, b, and c) if anyone has any ideas.