Picture upload issue with php - php

Question

I have some code that is supposed to allow the user to browse his machine for jpeg, gif, or png to upload.
My code works fine from my xampp localhost.
I have upload my code to Amazon Web Services where I have a Ubuntu 12.04 server that I installed a LAMP on. Once there the code does not work.
I have tracked down where I believe the code fails. It is at getimagesize($old_image_path) this returns a empty set.
$old_image_path = /var/www/ch23_ex1/images//leaf.gif when I select a pic from my desktop, not sure why this path shows but it worked with xampp.
Notice the echo statements that included for testing the output from these is:
allow_url_fopen = 1
/var/www/ch23_ex1/images//NChandler03.jpgbool(false) Image type = File must be a JPEG, GIF, or PNG image.
Here is the section of code where I believe the fail is:
function resize_image($old_image_path, $new_image_path,
$max_width, $max_height) {
echo "allow_url_fopen = " . ini_get("allow_url_fopen")."<br>";
// Get image type
echo $old_image_path;
//$image_info = file_get_contents($old_image_path);
$image_info = getimagesize($old_image_path);
$image_type = $image_info[2];
var_dump($image_info);
echo 'Image type = '.$image_type;
// Set up the function names
switch($image_type) {
case 2:
$image_from_file = 'imagecreatefromjpeg';
$image_to_file = 'imagejpeg';
break;
case 1:
$image_from_file = 'imagecreatefromgif';
$image_to_file = 'imagegif';
break;
case 3:
$image_from_file = 'imagecreatefrompng';
$image_to_file = 'imagepng';
break;
default:
echo $image_type;
echo 'File must be a JPEG, GIF, or PNG image.';
exit;
}
}

Answer 1

I found my answer posted on similar question. All I had to do was change the permissions on the images file by entering the following code into the server. This first command changes the directory to the file that holds my images file. The second command changes the permissions of the images file so that my code can write to it. I hope this helps someone else.
cd /var/www/ch23_ex1/
sudo chmod 775 images