function.fopen: failed to open stream: Permission denied in PHP

Question

I'm trying to create XML sitemaps for my website from my PHP application. The idea is to either create a new file or overwrite an existing file. When I call fopen, I get the following error:

[function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied

I'm trying to write to the webroot and its permissions are: 755. This means that the owner has write permission, right? What do I need to do to make my script be able to write to this folder? 777 would be a bad thing, right? Can I run my script as owner somehow?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Yep, as you've said, using 777 could be huge mistake. The webserver doesn't run with the same user as you use to create files and folders.

You have some options:

• Run the sitemap creation as a cronjob, using an user with rights to write there, other than the apache user.
• Put the sitemap in another directory, and the set up a 302 Redirect or a symlink. In this case, if you have a security issue that let's someone to write your sitemap.xml, at least they'll not be able to create another file with a more dangerous extensions (like PHP, which may result in a site intrusion).
• Make a rewrite rule to redirect any hit to sitemap.xml, to a php script that outputs the appropriate XML.

Good luck!