CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpsecuritybashnetwork-programming
HyderA
HyderA

Reputation: 21391

What's the best way to write to linux system files using PHP

We need some scripts to generate config files for network services such as DHCP, DNS and Network based on user input. These require root access, but I don't know how to run the PHP application as root. It's run through a public web interface.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1530

Answers (3)

Pekka
Pekka

Reputation: 449613

Awww... granting root rights to PHP or the web server is never a good practice, no matter how secure your setup.

How about having PHP write the changed configuration files into a temporary directory: 

/home/system/transfer/apache/httpd.conf
/home/system/transfer/system/dhcp.conf
/home/system/transfer/mysql/my.ini

and a sudo cron job running a shell script fetching them from there, and copying them to the proper location (also taking care of restarting services and all that), on a five-minute basis?

It would be a bit safer than having the Web/PHP user write the configuration files directly, plus it would be relatively easy to set up a versioning process that allows to roll back a configuration file to an earlier version.

Upvotes: 6

mcandre
mcandre

Reputation: 24632

  1. Run apache as a root user.
  2. What's your website's address?

Upvotes: 0

Sjoerd
Sjoerd

Reputation: 75629

Instead of giving the PHP script root access, make the configuration files writable by the web user.

Upvotes: 2

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