touch function problems

ayj

I am using php 4.3.0 on a server running under FreeBSD, and php 4.3.1 on my PC at home using Xitami with W2K. At home "touch" works exactly as expected.

On my server, providing the permissions are right, I can touch a file using:

if (touch ($filename))

but the same php file, same perms, same everything, using

$timeu = time();
if (touch ($filename, $timeu))

returns false.

As I said, I have tested on my PC and no problems and sensible dates obtained on the target file. Any ideas what is going wrong? In case you wonder, the above is stage one in manipulating the last modified date further, but this is the point the failure occurs at.

ayj

tsinka

Hi,

thought about it a little bit and came to two reasons:

1) The partition has been mounted with noatime so the last access time wouldn't be set at all.
2) You can only touch files you own, so if the web server runs as nobody, nobody must be the owner of that file.

Thomas

ayj

Hi Tsinka

Thanks for your response. You are raising issues that are at the limits of my understanding, but.... does your suggestion take account of the fact that, in the first example with only a single "touch" parameter, it does work on the web-server - the last modified date is indeed changed. Surely this indicates that the ownership relationship betwen the two files (and folder)allows the touch command to operate in all circumstances (as the only difference between the two is that the second specifies a different date target). For some reason the second command is not acceptable - despite issueing no error message.

I have been wondering myself if it is problem of integration of php with free bsd. I am well out of my depth with this but at the shell level the touch command for free bsd has significantly different arguments than for Unix - for example with Unix there is a -B argument which does not exist for Free bsd, which requires a -t argument to achieve much the same.

ayj (groping in the dark)

PS to be clear, it is the last modified date that I am attempting to manipulate, not the last acces date (which will change also I know).

tsinka

Hi,

what if you use the system or exec functions to call the system touch command directly if FreeBSD has a slightly different approach to touch that isn't supported by php ?

ayj

Hi tsinka, thank you 🙂 ahhhhhh, now that is new to me. I just found the Program Execution functions part of the manual, so, using them I can just have the single problem "touch" line in a script and (with some reading) pass variables to this script from a php file? That should indeed work and a great thing to learn how to do.

I do already have a shell script (.pl) that will do this task but being stubborn and determined to learn php I was not happy to find myself unable to do it within php.

Thanks again (if I am on the wrong track could you give a pointer)

ayj

tsinka

Hi ayj,

I think you're on the right track 🙂