weird apache behaviour: error 500 if not owner of files - php

My server runs on Centos 5 and I recently upgraded my php from 5.4.21 to 5.4.41 for some php_intl compability issues. (my problems stated then)
I usuall have all my httpdocs files in chown root:apache and chmod 755 (except the directory i need apache to write, like the symfony app/cache or others)
Recently (after update) my webpages went blank returning a silent (no message) 500 error.
Without changing the chown of root:apache I set a chmod 755 * -R and it worked again for 2 minutes or so and went back to this silent 500 error.
I then realized that the problem did not occure if i set the chown as apache:apache
This chmod 755 * -R that fixes the problem for two minutes is really strange though and i lost quite some time trying to understand if a file was switching back to an other chmod by itself or something but nop...
If you have any clue why this chmod would fix the problem for a few minutes only.
Second thing (most important) why would apache not read my file in root:apache 755 as it clearly has the read permissions ?
a few details :
I run httpd via a "sudo httpd start"
in the config the User and Group for httpd is "apache"
my linux user apache is in the group apache
it worked ok before i updated the php version which is weird as apache confi does not seem to have changed.

Related

How do I fix this symfony config.php permission error?

I am trying to set up symfony. I am running ubuntu, I have apache2, phpmyadmin and phpstorm installed. I am getting this error under config.php of my project:
MAJOR PROBLEMS Major problems have been detected and must be fixed
before continuing: Change the permissions of either "app/cache/" or
"var/cache/" directory so that the web server can write into it.
Change the permissions of either "app/logs/" or "var/logs/" directory
so that the web server can write into it.
so I went to /var
I tried a few things:
sudo thunar and then changed all the permissions to writeable. This didn't work and the permissions changed right after.
I went on this site, it says to use certain commands to fix permissions: sudo chmod 754 /var/cache and sudo chmod 754 /var/log and sudo chmod -R 775 /var/cache and sudo chmod -R 775 /var/log
This also did not work
I should also note that I have cleared my cache and restarted apache2.
Glad you figure it out by your self.
In any case you can read more about it here: Setting up Permissions / Symfony2
Let me know. Ciao!
I figured it out. The cache and log are within the app themselves. This did not make much sense to me initially considering that the permissions of the folder they are in (the root, the www folder) had already had all their permissions set appropriately. All I did was set chmod -R 755 on those folders IN my app.

Laravel 5 not getting any error logs

I installed Laravel 5 on a new VPS, I was running everything fine but I noticed I wasn't getting any Laravel errors the system would only fire a server 500 error at me which is no help when debugging my code.
When I looked in the laravel storage/log it was empty which was strange because I had set the correct file permissions of 777.
So how do I get laravel logs? Why aren't they being written to my storage/log file.
If you've set your file permissions correctly on the /storage file directory and you're running on a VPS not shared hosting you might want to check your apache log, inside var/log/apache2/error.log
Here you might just see a line that read something along the lines of /var/www/html/storage/logs/laravel.log" could not be opened: failed to open stream: Permission denied
Well this is strange because you have the correct file permissions...
Let's start by SSH'ing into your VPS head to the directory where laravel is installed normally cd /var/www/html
In here if you run ls -l You should get some results similar to this image below:
Notice how we've been accessing the site as the root user, this is our problem and we can confirm this by running ps aux | grep apache2
You can see here apache2 is running as the user www-data, which is normal for apache. Which means when our laravel installation trys to move files either using ->move() or just trying to write the log file it fails as the www-data user doesn't have permission. So you can change to this www-data user by running: chown -R www-data:www-data * (shorthand for same user/group chown -R www-data. *)
Now if you run ls -l in your www/html directory you should see root user changed to www-data:
This means were now editing the files as the www-data user which has permission, so any changes you make via SFTP should reflect this user change. Fixed!
Edit - This is the first time I answered my own question hopefully it's okay.

phpMyAdmin "Cannot load or save configuration"

I have been trying to setup phpMyAdmin on a macbook pro running yosemite 10.10.2. I have created a config folder in phpmyadmin and have given it the permissions required:
chmod o+wr ~/Sites/phpmyadmin/config
However, when I then go onto "localhost/phpmyadmin/setup" I get an error:
Cannot load or save configuration
Please create web server writable folder config in phpMyAdmin top level
directory as described in documentation. Otherwise you will be only able to
download or display it.
(I have tried attaching an image, but can't due to my reputation points)
I have tried resetting the permissions, tried deleting and recreating the folder. Tried redownloading the phpmyadmin zip but nothing seems to work.
Could anyone kindly advise me what I am doing wrong and how I am best placed to solve this issue?
I have had similar issue on my Ubuntu 16.04. I made a research and in the end I found a resolution of the issue. Maybe my case solution will help somebody else.
Background: For security reasons I have non privileged user and group apache:apache (sudo groupadd apache | useradd -g apache apache). They are preset by directives (User apache; Group apache) in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf. This user apache:apache owns Apache2 main directory (sudo chown -R apache:apache /etc/apache2) and some other files, for example: sudo chown -R apache:apache/etc/phpmyadmin/htpasswd.setup
In this manual: http://docs.phpmyadmin.net/en/latest/setup.html - I found that...
Debian and Ubuntu have changed way how setup is enabled and disabled,
in a way that single command has to be executed for either of these.
To allow editing configuration invoke:
/usr/sbin/pma-configure
To block editing configuration invoke:
/usr/sbin/pma-secure
Note! In the content of the two files listed above we talk about /var/lib/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php instead of /etc/phpmyadmin/config/config.inc.php. It was the key.
In my case I was modified the content of these scripts (see below) and now I can use localhost/phpmyadmin/setup properly.
/usr/sbin/pma-configure:
#!/bin/sh
echo "Unsecuring phpMyAdmin installation..."
echo "Setup script can now write to the configuration file."
echo
echo "Do not forget to run /usr/sbin/pma-secure after configuring,"
echo "otherwise your installation might be at risk of attack."
sudo sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/lib/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php
chmod 0660 /var/lib/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php
/usr/sbin/pma-secure:
#!/bin/sh
echo "Securing phpMyAdmin installation..."
echo "Setup script won't be able to write configuration."
sudo sudo chown -R root:root /var/lib/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php
chmod 0640 /var/lib/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php
I was able to use phpMyAdmin in my ~/Sites directory and remove the warning by giving the config folder writable access as such:
chmod 756 ~/Sites/phpmyadmin/config
Does it work if you try setting up PHPMyAdmin in system root versus user root? On OSX that server web root should be under /Library/WebServer/Documents?
I used this guide when I set mine up, and it works fine, although I did not use Sites as my root.
http://www.dingendoen.com/osx-installs-configuration-examples/install-apache-mysql-php-on-osx-yosemite/
For local development, changing permissions worked for an OSX Sierra install:
sudo chown -R _www:_www ~/Sites/phpmyadmin

Setting up Laravel, getting PDO and permission problems

So on my linux AWS instance, I am trying to install a laravel application and am running into an awful amount of permission problems.
By default, when I cloned my project into var/www/, the owner was Root. I changed the owner to apache, and added ec2-user to apache. From what I've read, this seems correct.
From there, I tried to run php composer.phar install, which resulted in a permissions error unless I ran it sudo, and then the error was that "Class 'PDO' not found in /var/www/Mumble/app/config/database.php".
So from there, it looked like PDO wasn't installed, so I used yum to install it, which got me the typical laravel error log, but it is now saying "could not find driver". Looking at php info, pdo is configured for mysqli. Could that be my problem? Does anybody know of some places I could look for resources?
First things first, the latest version of laravel is 4.3, compatible with PHP >= 5.4 (Source: Laravel Installation).
The bad news is, the yum package of apache on AWS comes with PHP 5.3. Check your php version using php phpinfo() in your ssh console.
If you have the proper PHP version, you will have to make sure PHP is running underneath the user apache.
Go to /etc/php.ini and search for the parameter user=. Make sure it says user=apache, and group=apache.
If all of this checks out, your final step is to make sure that your /app/storage directories are on a 777 permission with owner being apache. Only laravel uses these for internal purposes, so it's alright.
I suspect you need to give the permission to access, is it accessible the /var/www directory?
if not try this,
sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www
for secure permission use 775 for the directories.
perhaps permission you need to set:
# Set group to www-data
sudo chgrp www-data /var/www
# Make it writable for the group
sudo chmod 775 /var/www
# Set GID to www-data for all sub-folders
sudo chmod g+s /var/www
# Add your username to www-data group
sudo usermod -a -G www-data username
# Finally change ownership to username
sudo chown username /var/www/
# Your account shouldn't have any more permission issues
Note: please read about the file permission before you go further .

Unpacking the update... Could not create directory. Wordpress

When I instal nextgen-gallery plugins. This error message appears
Downloading update from https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/nextgen-gallery.zip…
Unpacking the update…
Could not create directory.
How can I fix this problem ?
This is a permissions issue. Ensure the directory is writable by apache. Plugins are unpacked into the wp-content/plugins directory, so I would first attempt writing to the directory as apache:
sudo -u apache touch /path/to/wp-content/plugins/test.txt
Set permissions accordingly to correct the issue. You can read about permissions here: https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/it-ops/linux-file-permissions
You can read about the correct file permission scheme for Wordpress here: https://wordpress.org/support/article/changing-file-permissions/
#skrilled and #knutole's answer was great but I found that when attempting to fix the issue on the plugins folder, everything was ok and the answer did not work for me.
If anyone else has this issue, try looking at the upgrades folder also. This folder (from what I can see) is used as a folder to store temporary files for when WP upgrades or plugin updates are being ran.
If you simply receive the message stating 'Could not create directory' and there is no path specified, it could actually be talking about the upgrades folder.
Most likely, if you have configured it correctly, the http server associated to your wordpress site belongs to the group www-data. That's how one should configure it correctly.
Try members www-data and ps aux | grep www-data to be sure. In the latter command you should see on the last columns either nginx or apache.
In this case, you just need to set that group to the directory
sudo chgrp -R www-data <your_wordpress_root_dir>/
and then add full group permissions to such directory
sudo chmod -R g+rwx <your_wordpress_root_dir>/
Now it works perfectly :)
for nginx people
if you have php-fpm installed you have to tell it that its user and group is nginx. /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf . find user which is assigned to apache by default and change it to nginx. also do it for group. then run this command :
sudo service php-fpm restart
also inside of your wordpress directory execute these commands
sudo chown nginx:nginx * -R
sudo usermod -a -G nginx username
change username into what your current username is.
yet you have to apply propper permissions.
run these commands inside your wordpress directory
sudo find . -type f -exec chmod 664 {} +
sudo find . -type d -exec chmod 775 {} +
If you are using vsftpd as your FTP server and have enabled passive connections, you need to add pasv_promiscuous=YES to /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf.
I was having a similar issue. It started with me trying to update a plugin on a migrated WP install. I didn't get it, all my permissions were EXACTLY the same as the old server. In my situation, I started to see that not much was working properly. I couldn't install/delete plugins or themes as well as uploading media would error out. Then I found the fix via some research.
If you are still having this issue, and changing permissions DID NOT fix the problem try this:
Go in to your hosting control panel and find your hosting settings, wherever you can edit your scripting settings. In Plesk (as in my example), this would be under Websites & Domains. Click on your domain name at the bottom. On the next screen, where it says "PHP support (run as..." change the dropdown from "Apache module" over to "FastCGI application". Everything should be fixed up now!
(Re)setting the permissions via ftp didn't make a difference for me either. There is no SSH available, so I had to log in the control panel (directadmin in my case), the File Manager where I could "Reset Owner" to "File ownership reset" the /wp-contents directory.
I'm running Nginx with Wordpress. I deleted the upgrade folder in wp-content and then ran the upgrade from the wordpress GUI again. I noted the linux user for the upgrade folder created was www-data. I then did a {sudo chmod -R www-data:www-data .} Ran the upgrade again from the GUI and it worked.
Probably need to change the permissions on most of the folders so they can't be modified by www-data but I'll figure that out tomorrow.
A permission issue, make sure apache (www-data) has write permissions.
All the above is great, but I think you missed the simplest issue. Your website is using more space than it has allotted, and therefore it is broke. Wordpress makes more files as is in use. If you are on the margin of going over, a simple overnight issue where you did nothing is possible. Go to bed, everything fine. In the morning website is broke.
I own my websites so I go into the reseller part of Hostmonster or Hostgator (I have sites on both hosting platforms) and I reallocate more space and the problem goes away usually. Try that first, or look into it before messing around with permissions. If you changed a permission and the issue came up, could be permissions, otherwise, check this first.
I had the same issue when I tried to install wp plugin(s). However, I managed to solve the problem with the following command:
sudo wp plugin install [plugin name] --allow-root

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