Question

I’m trying to read a file in PHP and I’m getting a permission denied error although everybody has read access to the file.

The PHP code:

$config=file_get_contents('/opt/jenkins/home/config.xml');

The error:

Warning: file_get_contents(/opt/jenkins/home/config.xml): failed to open stream: Permission denied in [...]

The filesystem permission:

There is a symlink pointing /opt/jenkins/home/ to /var/lib/jenkins and everybody has read permission on the symlink, actual folder, and file.

$ ls -lh /opt/jenkins/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 sysadmin sysadmin   16 2011-08-04 08:12 home -> /var/lib/jenkins

$ ls -lh /var/lib/ | grep jenkins
drwxr-xr-- 6 jenkins adm     4.0K 2011-08-04 10:04 jenkins

$ ls -lh /var/lib/jenkins/config.xml
-rwxr-xr-- 1 jenkins adm 3.9K 2011-08-04 10:05 /var/lib/jenkins/config.xml

Apache configuration

Configured to folllow symlinks (Options All). Adding a Directory directive for /var/lib/jenkins/ makes no difference.

<Directory /opt/jenkins/home/>
        Options All
        AllowOverride All
        Order Allow,Deny
        Allow from All
</Directory>

Additional info

Whether I use the path through the symlink ("/opt/jenkins/home/config.xml") or the real path ("/var/lib/jenkins/config.xml") I have the same problem.

apache2 version=2.2.14-5ubuntu8.4
php version=5.3.2-1ubuntu4.9

Any idea as to why I’m getting the error?

Answer 1

Your directory needs execute permission for this to work. It does not seem to have world execute, and since jenkins is probably not the apache user, and the apache user is not in the adm group, it wouldn’t work:

$ ls -lh /var/lib/ | grep jenkins
drwxr-xr-- 6 jenkins adm     4.0K 2011-08-04 10:04 jenkins

Per example:

netcoder@netcoder:~$ mkdir foo
netcoder@netcoder:~$ echo hello > foo/bar
netcoder@netcoder:~$ chmod 777 foo/bar
netcoder@netcoder:~$ ls -lsah foo/bar 
4.0K -rwxrwxrwx 1 netcoder netcoder 6 2011-08-04 08:22 foo/bar
netcoder@netcoder:~$ chmod 444 foo/
netcoder@netcoder:~$ ls -lsah | grep foo
4.0K dr--r--r--  2 netcoder netcoder 4.0K 2011-08-04 08:22 foo
netcoder@netcoder:~$ cat foo/bar 
cat: foo/bar: Permission denied

Even though foo/bar has 0777 permission, if the directory does not have the execute permission, reading its contents is denied.

You’ll need the permission to be set for both the target directory and the symbolic link.