PHP acting as if in safemode

[jamesm87]

Hey,

I've been puzzled by this one all day, and really hope someone could point out the obviously simple mistake I am overlooking.

I have apache setup as user "apache", and I want PHP to rename a file created by PHP in the tmp folder to a folder in /var/spool/ however I keep getting the error message "Permission denied" with the "rename" function and the "exec" function just dies with no error.

Odd thing is, when I "su apache" and do the command I tried with exec, it works perfect which can only mean there is some internal setting in PHP or Apache blocking this.

PHP Info shows that

safe_mode: Off Off
safe_mode_exec_dir: no value no value
safe_mode_gid: Off Off
safe_mode_include_dir: no value no value
open_basedir no value no value

and have also added php_admin_flag safe_mode Off to httpd.conf and in .htaccess, still nothing!

So what possibly could be refusing PHP to access that folder when all filesystem permissions are correct?

Many thanks

[sneakyimp]

Permissions can be tricky. A permission failure usually doesn't tell you much. The inability to move or rename a file is usually due to either not owning the file or not being a member of the group that own s the file OR being owner/group but the file is read-only or something.

If you want to be absolutely sure which user apache is, you can run this script:

<?
passthru('whoami');
?>

On my debian servers, it's always www-data, not apache.

Given that you are trying to move a file from one directory to another, apache will need read and write access to the file in its original tmp location and apache will also need write privileges for the destination folder, /var/spool. Perhaps you could do an ls -l on those and let us know what the permissions look like?

ls -dl /var/spool