Giving PHP apps access to different partitions

chunderbunny

Hey all.

I'm trying to torrentflux (a PHP based web frontend to bittorrent) to work on my server, but I'm only having partial success. Torrentflux itself is installed in /var/www/localhost//htdocs/torrentflux/ and for the most part it works fine. However, it needs access to a directory to download the files to, which is where the problems start. If I tell it to use /share, then everything works. Unfortunately /share is on my root partition which is only 10GB. I want it to use /home/share, since my /home partition is much larger. When I tell it to use /home/share it complains that the "path is invalid", as if it is not seeing the directory at all.

I've been fiddling with the value of open_basedir in my php.ini but nothing I do seems to allow torrentflux to see the download directory.

I'm a total newbie when it comes to apache and PHP so I don't really know where to start with this problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

xoomix · Guru Joined: 02 Jan 2003 Posts: 489

A workaround could be to just make a symlink for like /share/torrents that points to /home/share, and tell torrentflux to use /share/torrents .

chunderbunny · Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 8:57 pm Post subject:

That doesn't work, I tried. PHP resolves the symlinks when determining permissions so it knows that the /share symlink is pointing to a different partition.

xoomix · Guru Joined: 02 Jan 2003 Posts: 489

So is it not possible to just chown the directory you want access to?

martin20450 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 91

Or you could chgrp the symlinked directory to apache and enable write access to it.

chunderbunny · Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:20 pm Post subject:

xoomix · Guru Joined: 02 Jan 2003 Posts: 489

Does chmod'ing the download dir to 777 fix it?

chunderbunny · Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:35 pm Post subject:

It's already 777.

xoomix · Guru Joined: 02 Jan 2003 Posts: 489

So, when you install torrentflux all permissions of scripts, dirs etc are all checked. Did you get green flags on the final check config step during the install?

erik258 · Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:45 pm Post subject:

maybe mount -o bind could function as a workaround for a symlink.
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chunderbunny · Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:47 pm Post subject:

Yes, it installed without any errors. Like i said earlier, everything works fine if I set the download path to one on the same partition as /var/www, but setting it to something on a different partition fails.

erik258 · Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:58 pm Post subject:

instead of
ln -s /home/share /share/torrents
use bind-mounting
mount -o bind /home/share /share/torrents
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chunderbunny · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 12:20 am Post subject:

erik258 · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 3:33 am Post subject:

you are using php as an apache module, right? good. it sounds like that's a lot better.

here is an interesting article about php security that is talking about exactly what your problem is. (btw it says apache runs as nobody. but my apache runs as apache. anyway ... )
i have looked into that a little, and have come to the conclusion that PHP itself isn't to blame. Here's why: the access control PHP implements is based indeed on the open_basedir ; but if that were preventing you, it would also prevent /share, since /share and /home are at the same place in the filesystem.

i find your consideration of my binding option to be a 'dirty hack' rather interesting, since as far as i know mount is the authority on where what is in the filesystem. perhaps a little disorganized ... anyway, you are certainly correct in saying it didn't help, and it isn't ever going to : (. sorry.

there is a config i would have suggested, had you not already tried it. but that isn't your problem i think. at any rate, it's disabled by default, so you might as well turn it off if you want to believe that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

the whole point of the filesystem is that it doesn't matter what it is, just where it's mounted, and that is what i am so confused about here ... so i wonder, is this problem by chance related to something about either the torrent manager you're using, or else maybe the options with which you've mounted /home ...

well, you've certainly got me stumped on this one ; )
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