What permissions for PHP scripts/directories?

Question

I am trying to help a friend moving a web-site from one web-hotel to another. The old place is already closed, I have only a flat tar file of what was in it.

The we

Answer 1

1) Files that end with a .php extension are handed off to the PHP compiler by Apache. If the proper configuration is not set up to do so, PHP files get served up as text files by the server. The Apache configuration line "AddHandler php5-script php" in the httpd.conf file is the PHP5 method of setting this up.

2) register.php needs to be accessible at http://www.example.com/php/register.php, as the java app is looking for it, so in the Apache htdocs folder, there needs to be a "php" folder with the register.php file in it.

3) PHP files need read access by the user that's running the Apache service. Using PHP as an Apache module has no 'service' to speak of that's separate for PHP. Instead the Apache service, when it gets a request for a PHP file, makes a shell call to the PHP binary to parse the file and hand the Apache service the result, which it serves to the client. Only if you were using PHP from the command line (CLI setup) would the scripts need execute permission, and start with a #!/path/to/php-bin line.

4) The requested file (register.php) needs to be in htdocs in order to be served by Apache. If PHP is running with "Safe Mode" disabled, register.php could include a file that was outside the htdocs folder.

5) The path "../inc/db_login.php" is relative to the PHP script that was originally fetched (register.php), so, since register.php is in htdocs/php/register.php, that would put db_login.php at htdocs/inc/db_login.php.