ASOwiki: PHPPermissions5

Understanding File Ownership and Permissions in PHP 5

PHP 5 runs under the suPHP module, and executes as a CGI. This means that all scripts will run under your User ID, and NOT the user ID of the web server. This is different from PHP4 as an Apache module.

All files must be owned by your user ID and the permissions must be 644 for files and 755 for directories. Any files that are "group-writable" (664/775) or "world-writable" (666/777) will result in a 500 Internal Server Error.

If you previously had the default PHP4 enabled for your account and switch to PHP5, you may need to check all your file permissions to be sure all files are 644 and directories 755. You can change these in most FTP clients.

Here is an example of a directory listing with Unix permissions:

-rw-r--r--   john john   566 May 23 19:05 index.php     # This is chmod 644 (correct)
-rw-rw-rw-   john john  171 May  7 21:00 main.php       # This is chmod 666 (incorrect)
drwxr-xr-x   john john  4096 Jan 1 21:00  folder1/      # This is chmod 755 (correct)
drwxrwxrwx   john john  4096 Jan 1 21:00  folder1/      # This is chmod 777 (incorrect)

If you are comfortable with using SSH and Unix commands, you can enter these two commands to remove group/world-writable permissions:

john@example.com [/home/john]$ chmod -R g-w *        # Removes group-writable
john@example.com [/home/john]$ chmod -R o-w *        # Removes world-writable

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