Adding apache to a user group file upload permission

Question

I have a php script uploading files to a certain folder, currently they are uploading as a 'psacln' group, so that I can delete the files via FTP. This was all working fine when PHP was running as FastCGI, I had to change PHP to run as Apache Module in order to get a php extension to work. But now I can't delete files via PHP script because permission is denied. I assume because now the group 'Apache' is trying to delete the file that belongs to 'psacln'. How do I allow apache to delete those files?

EDIT: ls -alF

drwxr-xr-x   2 fugitiveink psacln 4096 Nov 13 14:05 92/
drwxr-xr-x   2 fugitiveink psacln 4096 Nov 13 06:57 93/
drwxr-xr-x   2 fugitiveink psacln 4096 Nov 13 14:12 95/
drwxr-xr-x   2 fugitiveink psacln 4096 Dec 21 18:56 96/
drwxr-xr-x   2 fugitiveink psacln 4096 Dec 21 08:30 97/
drwxr-xr-x   2 fugitiveink psacln 4096 Nov 13 14:26 98/
drwxr-xr-x   2 fugitiveink psacln 4096 Nov 13 14:28 99/

Answer 1

I assume that you have shell and root access to this system. If so, you can try adding the apache user (typically apache or www-data) to the /etc/group file.

The proper way to do this is to use usermod, though I typically just edit the file directly.

In short if your apache user is apache, try:

sudo usermod apache --append --groups psacln

This basically gives the apache user access to any files & directories that are owned by the psacln group.

If this doesn't work, post an example of your directory with the file permissions (ls -alF) and we can work from that.

EDIT:

To directly edit the groups file using nano (substitute with whichever editor you're comfortable with):

sudo nano /etc/groups

and find the psacln group and add the apache user:

psacln:x:130:apache

Note that the gid (130) will undoubtedly be different.

Answer 2

Set the permissions on the upload directory to 777 (wrx for all users). Can you still upload new files? If you can, you should be able to delete files.