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"File permissions - help, please?"

Hi

As several others have noticed, files on the Freeola web servers, that are updated by php scripts, have had to have their Unix permissions changed. I've had to set mine to 777 to get some of my scripts working. But I thought that:

a) these numbers relate to owner/group/everyone
b) 7 is the most 'open' option
c) so 777 gives *everyone* full read/write/whatever access. This sounds pretty insecure to me.

Isnt the php script the 'owner'? I thought it was, so I'd only needed to give access to the owner previously. Freeola support tell me that I need to give access to 'group' and 'everyone', because of the upgrade, which has made my site 'more secure'. But it seems to me to be *less* secure, to give everyone full access.

I'm obviously not understanding something here. Can someone explain?

Thanks in advance ...

Hi cjh - creating a directory off the root is what I do too, for files accessed / updated by scripts. Only difference is that I manage to get away with relative addressing, as in "../myfiles/xyz.dat", rather than the full path you mentioned.
Bob, or someone ... can you explain just who is the "owner" of the files in our webspace, then, or are we all now part of "everyone", in terms of the three permission levels?

Ah that's a good idea. It's a way around the problem. I still say this 777 thing is bizarre though. :-)

With files that you don't want people to be able to view, but can be accessed by Scripts, such as PHP, then do what I do.

Create a Folder in your Rot Directory, and put them in there, and not in your htdocs Folder. Then you can get to them through your Script with the /freeola/users/x/x/srxxxxxxx/Extra_Files/

This way other people can't get to them by putting in www.whatever.com/thatfile.html

Hope that makes sence anf help you out.

Surely one of the original questions here has not been answered? Isn't 777 insecure? I can't run a message board where everyone has access to the files, can I?

Thanks, Bob - email is on its way ...

Is it right that directories all have to be given "777" permissions, then? But files within them can have different levels according to need?

If you need to get them reset send a mail to [email protected] and i'll take a look on Monday.

For 777, it's read + write + execute on owner / group / everyone. Tick everything!

I've really screwed up now. I was setting permissions on files, having worked out how to display the current settings in WSFTP. I set a couple of my directories to 711 (I think), which has made them invisible to me, via FTP, and also causes my web site to fail to load images from those folders. I'm hoping that Freeola Support will be able to reset the permissions to what they need to be. At the moment I can't get at themn to change them back!

Lesson learned. Leave file permissions well alone.

Andrew, what settings are 777 in IE6??

As you know they have the tick-boxes for User/Group/Everyone to Read/Write/Execute.

What tick combination do I need??

Ftp in by useing:

ftp://[email protected]

Or the following for classemail:

ftp://[email protected]

Then right click on a file and click properties. Then you can change the perms.

Tell me more! I didnt know IE6 could do that ...

Is it in the help files somewhere?