Changing folder owner

Sharif

Any folders my script creates in my server has the owner named 99. I would like to change it 'oox', but cannot. I get an error when using chown('folder', 'oox') that I do not have the permission. How can I do this with my script?

ScubaKing22

Well that basically means what it says; you don't have permission. Try using chmod() to change the permissions.

Sharif

When I create the folder, I do mkdir('dir', 0777) so everyone has permission to it, but the owner is still 99 since the script created it instead of the root on my hosting account and I cannot delete the folder if I want to. How can I make it so that the user is the root user and not 99.

bubblenut

Unless this is a command line script you're talking about then php will be run through your webserver (let's say Apache) all the Apache child processes are run under the apache user so you cannot change the owner to root.
If you're using it from the command line you have to run it as root to give it root priveledges (not advisable unless it is really necesarry, then you'd use the chown() function
HTH
Bubble

Sharif

Is there no way to change the upload owner to root? I mean there has to be, how do forum scripts handle skin uploads and all that?

bubblenut

Skin uploads for what? I can't see why you'd need to chown to root for anything other OS changes. You can chown/chmod the relevant files/directories for the apps you're trying to skin. I would feel incredibally uncomfortable knowing that general users can do anything close to the root user.
What exactly do you need to do?

Sharif

Ok well I have created a script that handles uploads of screenshots of games. Before the user gets to upload, they select the game, which also has it's own game id. After they select the file, during the upload, a new folder is created with the name of the game id, if it doesn't exist already with the permissions of 0777. And after that is created, the file is placed into that folder.

This all works but say I go into my FTP program and want to delete some screenshot folders, I cannot do it because it says the folder owner is 99 and not 'stk', which is the root owner.

bubblenut

stk is not the root user if it's not letting you delete the directory. root can do anything. What's so special about root is that with all other users a check is made to see if the user has the permissions to do somthing, with root the check is not even made (this is one of the reasons it's so dangerous, even if you have things set up to ask you before you delete in many distros it won't for root)

Right ... and you can't change the ownership through the ftp program? What I'd do is build a web based administration system for the site anyway, that way you don't have the worry of whether or not permissions are going to match up because it's all being done through the webserver/php setup.

Sharif

The upload program is web based. And when making the directory, mkdir() is set to use 0777 as the folder permission. And it STILL won't let me delete the folder.

bubblenut

that is odd, do you have ssh or telnet access to the server?

Sharif

Yes I do.

bubblenut

can you go in and double check the permissions. Go to the directory containing the offending directory and type

ls -l

ls -l | less

if it's contains losts of things

Sharif

Before I do that, here is the permissions on the /screenshots/ directory that the new directories are created in.

drwxrwx-wx (0773).

And I've never used SSH before so if you can please let me know how I am suppsoed to do this.

bubblenut

Well first you'll need an ssh client, the best one I've used (and it's free so that's good) is Putty, you can find it here you'll need to download the one marked PuTTY, but have a read of the details first so you know what it it's all about. I have to work on a windows box at work (and at the moment at home as well) and this is easily the most used program I have on there (and that includes firefox!!!)

Sharif

Ok turns out my host has disabled it and cannot have it up and ready for a few hours. I need to solve this prob ;(

jenni

Did you ever figure out a solution to this issue? I have a script that worked fine on one host, but when I moved it to a new host, any directories created by the script have the owner "nobody". The script had no issues on the old host.

Weedpacket

Oh, hey; we're not going to be told now that safe mode is in effect...?

Sharif

Jenni, I haven't found a "real solution", just to chmod the files and folders the script creats to 0777.