Webserver cannot write to directory when installing CMS

Question

I have a local stand-alone LAMP stack that I'm using for local web development. I've tried to install multiple CMS's that all use PHP to write data to a MySQL database and files on the webserver (Concrete5, Symphony, GetSimple CMS).

However when I try to install any of these I get error messages that each state something along the lines of "the files I need to change are not writeable by the webserver."

Concrete5 error message:

error: Web Server Access to Files and Configuration Directories
The /config /packages and /files directories must be writable by your webserver

Symphony error message:

Missing log file

Symphony tried to create a log file and failed. Make sure the install folder is writable.

Obviously this is a permissions issue, however I've tried changing the owner & group (recursively of course) of apache's www directory to many different combinations of root, the apache user & group and my own user & group as well as set the permissions all the way to 777 using chmod, and still I get the same error from all systems.

I can drop a regular static file (like phpinfo) into the www directory and apache serves it up just fine, but no matter what I change the permissions to the CMS's cannot write to the server. What is going on?

You need to provide exact error message to get a detailed answer. — Ruslan Osipov, Jun 08 '12 at 15:41
And you still getting this message when setting owner to apache user and chmod 777 for this directories? — Ruslan Osipov, Jun 08 '12 at 15:52
@Jack the /config it is trying to write to is actually within the concrete5 files (/var/www/concrete5/config) not the file system level /config — biggles, Jun 08 '12 at 15:55
@pyrate yes, even with apache owning the files and permissions at 777 this error still occurs. — biggles, Jun 08 '12 at 15:55
Yes I am using SeLinux. It just comes with Fedora 16... would it cause these problems? — biggles, Jun 08 '12 at 15:58
@jlego yeah, you'd have to explicitly grant apache permission to write into those directories ... you'd have to search online how to do that though ;-) — Ja͢ck, Jun 08 '12 at 16:01
@Jack would it just be easier to turn SeLinux off? Or would that cause security issues? — biggles, Jun 08 '12 at 16:05
@Jack I've used the SeLinux GUI tool to set booleans for allowing apache to write (as well as some for samba) and it worked. Please post the answer so I can mark it the answer. — biggles, Jun 08 '12 at 16:33
Would you mind editing Jack's answer with the specific commands that you used so that future visitors can benefit from this question? — , Jun 08 '12 at 17:35
I used the SELinux GUI Management tool to check the required booleans. Not sure what the commands would be... — biggles, Jun 11 '12 at 20:20

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 08 '12 at 17:17

2

If you use seLinux, it's not enough to give permissions using chmod. You have to grant apache permission to write into those folders as well.

More information can be found here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SELinux/apache

answered Jun 08 '12 at 17:17

Ja͢ck

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Webserver cannot write to directory when installing CMS

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