Posted by "Michael Sims" on 09/26/05 16:20

Jeffrey Sambells wrote:
> I need a php script to trigger another script to run as root on a
> machine. Currently, the scripts run as the www-data user, but that
> means I can't modify any files on the system that aren't owned by
> www-data or world writable. I somehow need to trigger a php script to
> run as the root user.

I would use "sudo" for this. It allows non-root users to execute only the
scripts you specify as root. Take a look at "man sudo" and "man visudo".
For example, if you wanted your PHP scripts to be able to run the script
"/usr/bin/foo" as root, you'd put an entry like the following in your
/etc/sudoers file:

www-data ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/foo

If you can change the permissions/ownership on the file(s) in question it
might be better to create a new group to own the files and make them group
writable, then put the "www-data" user into the new group.

HTH

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