Changing ownership and permissions

[Taorluath]

I just made a simple program to create files; I'm trying to get the hang of basic file manipulations.
Whatever file my program makes, the owner of the file is "www-data," so I can't edit it using my regular server user. I can use root to change the ownership to the server user, but I don't want to do that for every file.
That's why I tried to use chown() to give ownership to the server as soon as the file is made, but I get this error:

"Warning: chown() [function.chown]: Operation not permitted in /home/server/mysite/make.php on line 17"

chown(), chmod(), and chgrp() all apparently need root permissions.
So how do I give PHP the permissions required to use these functions??

[mikell]

This will definitely solve your problem if you don't care about security:
- Make your webserver run as root.

The following might not solve your specific problem with php but might help you think of another way to make those files editable by you without having to do it manually:

• You can write a script that uses sudo to chown every file in the files_created_with_php directory. (Sudo is a program that allows non-root users to do things that require root privileges.) Then just run that script from PHP after creating a file.

• You can activate the SetUID bit on a directory and as a result, any file created in that directory will be owned by the owner of that directory. So become the owner of whatever dir you are creating files in with php and set that bit. In FreeBSD you would do this with the following command: chmod +s <directory_name>. Probably the same with Linux. (There is also a SetGID for setting group ids.)

• You can schedule a cron job that chowns every file in the files_created_with_php directory and have it run every minute or so.

• Instead of messing with the file owner, you could join whatever group the files created by php belong to, and make sure that group can edit those files. Just call chmod from php after you create the file if you need to change the group permissions.

Thats all I got...hope that helps!