How to install something so the apache user will be able to run it?

nbdr · 12-14-2009, 04:29 AM

I'm setting up a script that requires s3cmd (amazon web services lib).

The lib runs well from the command line (user=root) but when I run the same command using PHP shell_exec it is not run and no error is returned. I assume that its because s3cmd the user is 'apache' when I run from PHP.

My question is how to install s3cmd (or any other software) so that I can run it from PHP (without phpsuexec).

Note: I installed using yum install. The OS is CentOs5
Thanks!
Niro

dracofhc · 12-14-2009, 07:34 AM

Sounds like it's a file permissions problem. On my system (ubuntu) apache runs as the user "www-data". Check if you have this user as well:

Code:

cat /etc/passwd | grep www

and if you do then likely you need to set the script so that the group "www-data" can execute it.

Code:

chown :www-data <your-script> && chmod 755 <your-script>

You may need to change the library so it can be read by this group, not sure.

nbdr · 12-17-2009, 01:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dracofhc

Sounds like it's a file permissions problem. On my system (ubuntu) apache runs as the user "www-data". Check if you have this user as well:

Code:

cat /etc/passwd | grep www

and if you do then likely you need to set the script so that the group "www-data" can execute it.

Code:

chown :www-data <your-script> && chmod 755 <your-script>

You may need to change the library so it can be read by this group, not sure.

Thanks, I didn't find www-data user but I did change the owner to 48 (the apache user id) and it still did not work. The binary permission is 755.

What else can I try?

dracofhc · 12-17-2009, 07:33 AM

I remember I ran into problems getting apache to run shell commands from php scripts about a year ago. Looking back through my code I found that I used the system() function to execute them instead of shell_exec(). Not sure if this was the problem but may be worth trying.

nbdr · 12-20-2009, 03:19 AM

I tried to run the script with system and passthrough commands and the result that came back is '1' witout additional info. I tried when s3cmd owner is 0 and 48 (apache) permission is 755. Please help.

dracofhc · 12-21-2009, 11:27 AM

Please post contents of the following:

httpd.conf
relevant file for this site from `sites-available/`
relevant section of code from your php application that calls s3cmd