Question

I have chmod() disabled on my server, but I still want users to be able to create read-only files via PHP, is there a way to do so?

Answer 1

You can’t, since it’s impossible to put anything in a read-only file…

EDIT actually, there is a way:

<?php
  $u = umask(0377); // disables --wxrwxrwx permissions
  $f = fopen("test", "w");
  umask($u);
  fwrite($f, "this is a test\n");
  fclose($f);
?>

% php foo.php
% ls -l test
-r--------  1 xxx xxx  14 19 May 10:27 test
% cat test
this is a test

The umask manipulation allows you to create a read/write file descriptor, even though the underlying directory entry is read-only.