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A folder under the directory /var/www/xml keeps changing permission from www-data toroot, meaning that no php file is able to write into the folder.

I think this happens when I restart the server.

drwxr-xr-x 6 root www-data 4096 Sep 10 13:40 xml

drwxr-xr-x 6 www-data www-data 4096 Sep 10 13:40 xml

How do I make sure this does not happen?

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2 Answers

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Are you the only person with root / sudo access to this server? If not, it is possible that someone else is changing the permissions and not notifying you.

Another thought would be a cron job that runs as the root user and issues a chown on that directory for whatever reason, e.g. such as after processing an xml feed file.

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It seems to happen when I upload new files to the folder, I did the following so that all file permission in the folder are changed to www-data chown www-data -R xml but this makes no difference for newly uploaded files, is there a fix around this? – mk_89 Sep 10 '12 at 18:05
How are you uploading new files (e.g. wget, scp, ftp, etc) and as what user? – KayakJim Sep 12 '12 at 15:31
Im using SFTP . – mk_89 Sep 12 '12 at 16:49
What user are you logging in as for your SFTP session? I'm guessing it is the root user, which is a very bad idea, but if so that would explain why the owner gets changed to the user that uploaded the file. – KayakJim Sep 12 '12 at 21:38
it is the root user – mk_89 Sep 12 '12 at 22:41
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Find out what changes the permission of the folder and fix it.

auditd can help.

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He's asking how. – adaptr Sep 10 '12 at 12:53

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