Apache and file permissions

Question

I'm running LAMP on Ubuntu 8.04. Apache's username and group are www-data. I put my connection details and AES key in a file in a directory that's not web served. I chown-ed the files to www-data:www-data and set the permissions to 700. Still, the script that require()s these files will only run if I chmod the files to 755. What am I missing?

Answer 1

Apache on ubuntu runs as root, they only use www-data to read, for several reasons, Yes it should be 755 if the key-file were outside the apache docroot.(default /var/www)

Answer 2

Double-check what user Apache is running as, it may not be www-data.

ps aufx | grep httpd