Php chown user and group

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

chown — Changes file owner

Description

chown(string $filename, string|int $user): bool

Parameters

Path to the file.

A user name or number.

Return Values

Returns true on success or false on failure.

Examples

Example #1 Simple chown() usage

// File name and username to use
$file_name= "foo.php";
$path = "/home/sites/php.net/public_html/sandbox/" . $file_name ;
$user_name = "root";// Set the user
chown($path, $user_name);// Check the result
$stat = stat($path);
print_r(posix_getpwuid($stat['uid']));?>

The above example will output something similar to:

Array
(
    [name] => root
    [passwd] => x
    [uid] => 0
    [gid] => 0
    [gecos] => root
    [dir] => /root
    [shell] => /bin/bash
)

Notes

Note: This function will not work on remote files as the file to be examined must be accessible via the server's filesystem.

Note: On Windows, this function fails silently when applied on a regular file.

martijn at sigterm dot nl ¶

19 years ago

If chown is filled with a variable (  chown ("myfile", $uid) the uid will be looked up through pwget_uid.

So if you need to set a non existing uid use inval($uid).

Mikevac at yahoo dot com ¶

14 years ago

I've only tested this on Solaris 10 so your mileage may vary.

To allow the apache daemon to change file ownership without being root, add the following line to /etc/system:

set rstchown=0

Reboot the server.

There are security concerns doing this as this modification allows any user to change ownership of their files to anyone else.

Klaus Zierer ¶

19 years ago

If you want to chown a symlink, PHP will follow the symlink and change the target file.

If you want to chown the symlink, you have to use shell_exec("/bin/chown user.group symlink");

njs+php at scifi dot squawk dot com ¶

22 years ago

If you allow sudo execution for chmod by "nobody" (www, webdaemon, httpd, whatever user php is running under)in this manner, it had better be a system on which the owner is able to be root and no one else can run code, else your whole system is compromised.  Someone could change the mode of /etc/passwd or the shadow password file.

Other system commands (sudo mount) and so forth are similar.

rickard at 0x539 dot se ¶

13 years ago

For most modern Linux systems your apache user should not be run as root, and in order to change the ownership of a file or directory, you need to be root. To get around this problem you can use sudo, but be careful with what permissions you give. Here is an example which is working for me:

www-data        ALL = NOPASSWD: /bin/chown 1[1-9][0-9][0-9]\:1[1-9][0-9][0-9] /home/www/[a-zA-Z0-9]*

This allows the apache server to change ownership of files in /home/www with name containing a-z, A-Z or numbers (note: no subdirectories). The only valid input of userid is a four digit numeric id, between 1100 and 1999.

Hope this helps.

Tayfun Bilsel ¶

16 years ago

Simple usage of the chown:

$file_name

greg _at_ rhythmicdesign d.o.t com ¶

18 years ago

function recurse_chown_chgrp($mypath, $uid, $gid)
{
    $d = opendir ($mypath) ;
    while(($file = readdir($d)) !== false) {
        if ($file != "." && $file != "..") { $typepath = $mypath . "/" . $file ; //print $typepath. " : " . filetype ($typepath). "
" ;
            if (filetype ($typepath) == 'dir') {
                recurse_chown_chgrp ($typepath, $uid, $gid);
            } chown($typepath, $uid);
            chgrp($typepath, $gid);

        }
    }

}