symbolic link and permissions

Hi All

I hope this an appropriate thread for the apache forum:

I currently have a symbolic link under my public_html pointing to a directory of files outside of the web root. I can access the directory with no problems via a web browser. Apache follows the symbolic link with NO PROBLEMS. This is what I want!

However, I want to create random named symbolic links for each visitor to the website to make it difficult for people to share the content from my site. But when I try to create a symbolic link via PHP, PERL etc. it doesn't work.

The only difference I see between creating a symbolic link via telnet and a scripting language is the owner:group. When I create a link from telnet, I have my default permissions set myname:mygroup, which matches the permissions of the target directory myname:mygroup. But when I create a symbolic link via a scripting language I get nobody:nobody .

After creating a symbolic link (blueatone ->some directory outside the webroot) via PHP, I got this error:




Does the symbolic link have to have the same owner:group as the target? My intuition says yes. IF that's the case, what can I do?

Any help/feedback? Thanks

nope, symbolic links inherit the permissions of the file they point at. it is probably the directory´s permissions that make the problems...

What directory are you talking about?

the directory the TARGET of your link resides in...
you cannot access files in a directory if you only have permission to access this file but not to access the directory it is in (or any parent directories)

And since it's Apache (PHP/PERL) that creates the link in /blah/blah/blueatone/hspa_la/, it's the user who runs the httpd that needs write permissions...

//NoXcuz

I'll admit that I appreciate the feedback, but I'm not sure all of what you are saying. I'm not sure that my explanation is clear

Is there a way for me to do what I described? Are the problems I'm explaining part of the learning process? Is this a result of the hosting companie's configuration?

Thanks

What's not clear? The user Apache runs as need to have permission to the target file. You can't do this:

ln -sf /etc/master.passwd /blah/blah/blueatone/hspa_la/master.passwd

Thanks for the feedback

I created .htaccess file containing the following line:
Options +FollowSymLinks

I didn't need to change permissions anywhere.

Now, all works well.