Permissions on ubuntu

Question

I just installed Ubuntu and LAMPP. I am very new to all of this so bear with me. I've installed LAMPP to /opt/lampp

My /opt/lampp/htdocs folder is where http://localhost points at. For the past hour, I wasn't able to write in that directory. I finally did sudo chown rondog /opt/lampp/htdocs and now I cant write. (rondog is me, the only actual "user" on the machine)

When I run one of my PHP scripts, I get a permission denied error when I attempt to call an fopen method. What do I need to do so I am able to write to this folder as well as PHP can execute commands such as fopen and fwrite? Thank you

Answer 1

One possibility is setting the Apache user and group to rondog. This way, folders and files created can always be used by you and the server. It can be done as follows:

Edit (or create if it doesn't exist) /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and add the following lines:

User rondog
Group rondog

Save the file and restart the server:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Your newly added user should pop up whenever you use:

$ ps aux | grep apache 

One advice though: keep your localhost files in your home directory. If you ever want a clean update of a new Ubuntu version, it's much easier to switch if you keep personal documents in your home directory. Furthermore, in that case you don't have to use the sudo chown command every time you create a new folder.

Answer 2

You have several options here. Either you do what Tim H suggests:

chmod -R 777

This will set read and write permissions for everyone.

But usually this is too broad. You can instead create a new group, place yourself and the web server user inside it and allow only you two to access and write the files:

$ sudo -i
# addgroup lamppusers
# adduser rondog lamppusers
# adduser www-data lamppusers # check, that www-data is the correct user
# chown -R :lamppusers /opt/lampp/htdocs
# chmod g+srwx /opt/lampp/htdocs

If you're not sure, if www-data is the right LAMPP user, issue

cat /etc/passwd

and look for a line, that might look like being the user used by LAMPP. Otherwise, if you had the chmod 777 in place before, look at PHP-generated files with ls -l to see whom they belong.

The g+srwx is another way to write 777 access rights, but additionally sets the sticky bit.

Finally, if you need more fine-grained access rights, google for File Access Control Lists (ACLs). They allow definitions of access rights on a per-user base.

Answer 3

Have you tried

chmod -R 0777 /opt/lampp/htdocs