How to run php-fpm as root

Question

I know the risks about running php-fpm as root. However there are situations where one would need to do it, like appliances, accessing operating system resources or even for testing purposes.

I have tried to change the user and group of php-fpm.d/www.conf to root when I restart the php-fpm process it raise an error:

Starting php-fpm: [26-Jun-2014 00:39:07] ERROR: [pool www] please specify user and group other than root
[26-Jun-2014 00:39:07] ERROR: FPM initialization failed
[FAILED]

What should I do. Anyone help?

Answer 1

See:

# php-fpm --help
...
 -R, --allow-to-run-as-root
               Allow pool to run as root (disabled by default)

Answer 2

Just adding -R (like this ans. suggests) to your command may not work. It depends how your running the command to start php-fpm.

If you're using service php-fpm restart and it's using /etc/init.d instead of systemctl (see here), then you'll have to add -R to the DAEMON_ARGS variable located in the /etc/php/<phpversion>/fpm/php-fpm.conf script. (This variable is used in the do_start() function. See here).

If it's using systemctl then you'll have to edit the script used by systemctl which should be located in /lib/systemd/system/<phpversion>-fpm.service. Append -R to the ExcecStart variable. Then run systemctl daemon-reload and systemctl start php<version>-fpm (See here)

I used the following questions/answers/resources to help me compile this solution.

1. https://serverfault.com/a/189961
2. https://serverfault.com/q/788669
3. https://stackoverflow.com/a/52919706/9530790
4. https://serverfault.com/a/867334
5. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-init-d-in-linux-service-management/