How to give write permission to apache user

Question

I am a beginner in server management.

I am using the class.upload.php library so that users can upload files from my website. To this, I give a full path like: uploads/gifs/90/x.gif This path does not exist on my server but I want to create it.

My php log returns me: PHP Warning: mkdir (): Permission denied

If on my server as root user I create the uploads folder with 777 permissions, the library creates the rest of the path correctly when uploading a file. User apache owns gifs/90/x.gif

From the above, I believe that the apache user does not have write permissions on the html folder. In etc/groups I have seen that the apache belongs to the group: nagcmd: x: 503: nagios, apache

The web folder on the server has the following permissions: drwxr-xr-x 32 root root 4096 Feb 4 17:20 html

I want the library to be able to automatically create directories in the html folder. What is the best way to do it?

1. Assign write permissions to others in html /: drwxr-xr-wx 32 root root 4096 Feb 4 17:20 html

2. Give permissions only to the nagcmd group so that it can write to html/ (I don't know how to do this)

3. Others

I don't want to compromise the security of the web.

Thank you very much in advance

Answer 1

It will depend on your system. But most likely you have a user and group called www-data, that the server runs as.

You can only change the user if you have capability CAP_CHOWN (you are root). You can add the file to group www-data, but you must ask the admin to add you to this group first.

If you don't have capability CAP_CHOWN, then you can use a file access control list.

setfacl -R -m "g:www-data:rwX" "directory-name"

You may need to enable access-control-list for the file-system. But this is the safest way, as it dose not need elevated privileges (except one-time to enable on FS).