CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpmysqldatabaseapachesqlite
Parker Ramsey
Parker Ramsey

Reputation: 45

Should the user "apache" own my SQLite database?

I am currently attempting to write a simple web page to store emails in a database. I am on a server which is not mine (but does run Apache), so I do not have root access, so I have opted to use SQLite3. The goal is to use PHP to INSERT into the database, however, I continue to encounter the issue with the database being owned by me and the PHP attempting to access using the user "apache" which leads to a "readonly" error. Since I am not root, I cannot chown the database file and even when I chmod 777, it has no effect. The conclusion I came to was to have the PHP script create the database itself (under the user apache) but now I do not have write access to the file. Is it okay for me to just allow apache to own the database or is there some better way to do this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 567

Answers (1)

CL.
CL.

Reputation: 180182

SQLite is a library, i.e., it's just a bunch of code that runs inside the web server process. This means that accesses to the database file behave just like any other file access from Apache.

The web server process needs to be able to access the file itself, and to create the journal rollback file in the same directory.

chmod 777 is a bad because every user on that machine can do anything to the database. It would be a better idea to have the database file and the directory belong to a group that has you and apache as members.

If the server's administrator will not create such a group, then you could have apache as the owner, and add a backdoor (sufficiently protected) to your web app to allow overwriting the database with a new file.

Upvotes: 1

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