I have a wordpress install and I want to be able to do the following two things:
automatically install plugins via the backend without providing an FTP/SSH user
upload files via FTP
To achieve point 1. I have read that I have to execute the following command: chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www. That means that the user/group www-data becomes owner of all files and folders in /var/www. After executing this command, the automatic installation of plugins works like a charm.
However, I now am not able to edit/upload files via FTP anymore. For FTP I use a different user named ftpuser. The following error is shown in my FTP client when I try to upload a new file: [Filename] open for write: permission denied
I put the ftpuser in the group www-data, hence I think that ftpuser should be able to write:
root#xyz:~# grep 'www-data' /etc/group
www-data:x:33:ftpuser
The file permissions on the folder /var/www are 755.
What is my issue here?
Can you please try by using the below code in wp-config.php :
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
Hope that will work.
I'm running WordPress on my VPS with CentOS 7 LAMP stack.I've followed this guide to set permissions, i.e. I've run
sudo chown apache:apache -R *
to ensure that my wordpress directory is owned by apache:apache.
I've also set WordPress directory and file permissions with these commands:
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
(I had to prefix the above commands with sudo)
Normally I manage the server by logging in through SSH using myuser, where myuser belongs to the apache group and the wheel group.
I have 3 problems:
Any file CRUD command in the WordPress directory still requires me to prefix the command with sudo, or else I get a permission error. Since myuser belongs to apache and apache owns the directory, I'm confused as to why I still need to prefix the commands with sudo.
Similar to problem 1, any git command such as a git pull requires me to prefix the command with sudo or else I get a permission error.
When I try to automatically update theme files from my WordPress dashboard web interface, I get permission errors. Interestingly, I'm able to install/update plugins via the WordPress dashboard without any permissions errors.
Any ideas on what I'm missing?
Look at:What does mode_t 0644 mean?
644 means:
* (owning) User: read & write
* Group: read
* Other: read
CRUD is a write command, so you're not allowed to do that. Either you change to 664 or keep using sudo. Basically any writing procedure on the file system would not be allowed without sudo since your user is not the owner (event though he is in the group).
#fortuneRice, CentOS7 features selinux enabled by default, which is often the cause of many hard-to-understand file permission errors.
I would suggest the following:
Edit /etc/sysconfig/selinux
Change SELINUX=permissive (or whatever SELINUX is currently set to in the file) to SELINUX=disabled
Reboot your server (not just the apache web server, but the whole machine)
Disabling SELINUX completely is not a good idea, therefore if this procedure works, you should re-enable SELINUX and fix its configuration.
Configuring SELINUX can be a difficult task, so I suggest you read up on google how to do that :)
chown -R -f user:apache /path of the directory
I also faced that issue and solved this problem by changing the PHP handler.
it is important to use PHP Handler that will run as the file owner.
After I installed HTTP2 and another few features on the way, I changed the PHP handler.
I am running WHM/CPanel on my VPS, and I fixed my issue following these steps:
Under WHM > Software > EasyApache 4 > Customize
Look for the: mod_suphp under the Apache Modules tab and make sure it is enabled, and if you just turned it on to install, follow step two.
Go to the Review tab and click the Provision button to save.
Under Whm > Software > MultiPHP Manager look for PHP Handlers tab.
Choose suphp as the handler for the current PHP version.
That's it. It was the PHP handler.
Edit: I notice that suphp had a conflict with one of my user uploads directories that I am adding dynamically to images a watermark. It seems the suphp handler had permission to upload but doesn't show the pictures.
I also tried the lsapi for the PHP Handler, and it seems to work correctly with the file's permissions and attaching via the .htaccess file watermarks for images.
I am using the rsyslog facility for logging. Everything is working fine; I am able to log the messages in /var/log/MYlog.log path.
But now my requirement is to log the message in some other path like /opt/log/Somepath.log instead of /var/log.
I tried modifying Path in the /etc/rsyslog.conf file, but it only works if I give a log path under /var/log/. Nothing else seems to work. I want the log Path to be a configurable path like /opt/log/somePath.log.
I have an entry like this in the file and it works fine:
local6.* /var/log/Mylog.log
Now if I change it like this:
local6.* /opt/log/Mylog.log
it does not generate the Mylog.log file in /opt/log. The directory /opt/log is present.
After Modifying the configuration file /etc/rsyslog.conf I am Restarting the deamon again.
`/etc/init.d/rsyslog restart`
And There is no possibility of any permission and security issue since both /var/log and /opt/log are having same permissions(I changed /opt/log permissions similar to the /var/log).
I am using CentOs 6.3. It is my local VM and there is no Chance of NFS.
Is there any way or trick so that I can achieve this?
The problem is selinux. SELinux will prevent processes that are labeled syslogd_t to write to files that are (probably) labeled default_t. So we need to label the file with something syslogd_t can write to. Files in /var/log are labeled var_log_t, a type syslogd_t can surely write to.
Temporarily You can achieve this by changing the label of /opt/log directory.
chcon -R -t var_log_t /opt/log
You can check the modified labeling using
ls -Z /opt/log
that will give output something like this
drwxrwxrwx. root root unconfined_u:object_r:var_log_t:s0 log
So after this you will be able redirect syslog to any other directories. For permanent solution you need to write SELinux policy.
I installed a WordPress blog in my local system. But when I try to add plugins from admin it asks for FTP access. What do I need to configure for WordPress to be able to upload without FTP?
Try to add the code in wp-config.php:
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
If you are using Ubuntu.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data PATH_TO_YOUR_WORDPRESS_FOLDER
"Whenever you use the WordPress control panel to automatically install, upgrade, or delete plugins, WordPress must make changes to files on the filesystem.
Before making any changes, WordPress first checks to see whether or not it has access to directly manipulate the file system.
If WordPress does not have the necessary permissions to modify the filesystem directly, you will be asked for FTP credentials so that WordPress can try to do what it needs to via FTP."
Solution:
In order to find out what user your instance of apache is running as, create a test script with the following content:
<?php echo(exec("whoami")); ?>
For me, it was daemon and not www-data. Then, fix the permission by:
sudo chown -R daemon /path/to/your/local/www/folder
If during installation of a plugin, Wordpress asks for your hostname or FTP details.
Then follow these steps:
Login to your server and navigate to /var/www/html/wordpress/.
Open wp-config.php and add this line after define(‘DB_COLLATE’)
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
If you get "Could not create directory" error. Give write permissions to your wordpress directory in recursive as
chmod -R go+w wordpress
NOTE. For security, revoke these permissions once you install a plugin as
chmod -R go-w wordpress
I changed the ownership of the wordpress folder to www-data recursively and restarted apache.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data <folderpath>
It worked like a charm!
On OSX, I used the following, and it worked:
sudo chown -R _www:_www {path to wordpress folder}
_www is the user that PHP runs under on the Mac.
(You may also need to chmod some folders too. I had done that first and it didn't fix it. It wasn't until I did the chown command that it worked, so I'm not sure if it was the chown command alone, or a combination of chmod and chown.)
I did a local install of WordPress on Ubuntu 14.04 following the steps outlined here and simply running:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data {path_to_your_project_directory}
solved my issue with downloading plugins. The only reason I'm leaving this post here is because when I googled my issue, this was one of the first results and it led me to the solution to my problem.
Hope this one helps to anyone!
There's a lot of similar responses to this question, but none of them fully touch on the root cause. Sebastian Schmid's comment on the original post touches on it but not fully. Here's my take as of 2018-11-06:
Root Cause
When you try to upload a plugin through the WordPress admin interface, WordPress will make a call over to a function called "get_filesystem_method()" (ref: /wp-admin/includes/file.php:1549). This routine will attempt to write a file to the location in question (in this case the plugin directory). It can of course fail here immediately if file permissions aren't setup right to allow the WordPress user (think the user identity executing the php) to write the file to the location in question.
If the file can be created, this function then detects the file owner of the temporary file, along with the file owner of the function's current file (ref: /wp-admin/includes/file.php:1572) and compares the two. If they match then, in WordPress's words, "WordPress is creating files as the same owner as the WordPress files, this means it's safe to modify & create new files via PHP" and your plugin is uploaded successfully without the FTP Credentials prompt. If they don't match, you get the FTP Credentials prompt.
Fixes
Ensure the plugin directory is writable by the identity running your php process.
Ensure the identity that is running your php process is the file owner for either:
a) All WordPress application files, or...
b) At the very least the /wp-admin/includes/file.php file
Final Comments
I'm not overly keen on specifically applying file ownership to the file.php to work around this issue (it feels a tad hacky to say the least!). It seems to me at this point that the WordPress code base is leaning towards having us execute the PHP process under the same user principal as the file owner for the WordPress application files. I would welcome some comments from the community on this.
From the first hit on Google:
WordPress asks for your FTP credentials when it can't access the files
directly. This is usually caused by PHP running as the apache user
(mod_php or CGI) rather than the user that owns your WordPress files.
This is rather normal in most shared hosting environments - the files are stored as the user, and Apache runs as user apache or httpd. This is actually a good security precaution so exploits and hacks cannot modify hosted files. You could circumvent this by setting all WP files to 777 security, but that means no security, so I would highly advise against that. Just use FTP, it's the automatically advised workaround with good reason.
For me the the process that solved, to be able to work on my localhost using Ubuntu, was:
(of course you must replace myUser by your user, whoami show it for you if you dont know)
Include myself on www-data group (to be able to access and edit files without sudo):
sudo usermod -aG www-data myUser
Set myself and this group as files owners:
sudo chown -R myUser:www-data /var/www/html
Set a major permission for the group (the group must write too):
sudo find . -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;
sudo find . -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
Then add this line on config.php
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
The easiest way to solve this problem is add the following FTP information to your wp-config.php
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
define('FTP_BASE', '/usr/home/username/public_html/my-site.example.com/wordpress/');
define('FTP_CONTENT_DIR', '/usr/home/username/public_html/my-site.example.com/wordpress/wp-content/');
define('FTP_PLUGIN_DIR ', '/usr/home/username/public_html/my-site.example.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/');
FTP_BASE is the full path to the "base"(ABSPATH) folder of the WordPress installation
FTP_CONTENT_DIR is the full path to the wp-content folder of the WordPress installation.
FTP_PLUGIN_DIR is the full path to the plugins folder of the WordPress installation.
We had the same problem as part of a bigger problem. The suggested solution of
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
hides that window but then we still had problems with loading themes and upgrades etc. It is related to permissions however in our case we fixed the problem by moving from php OS vendor mod_php to the more secure php OS vendor FastCGI application.
First move to your installation folder (for example)
cd /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/
Now we’re going to modify your htdocs directory:
sudo chown -R daemon htdocs
Enter your root password when prompted, then finish it out with a chmod call:
sudo chmod -R g+w htdocs
I was facing the same problem!
I've added the code below in wp-config.php file (in any line) and it's working now!
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
Add this to wp-config.php
If the issue still persist , you can try setting permission of plugin folder to 755
Or in linux you can set it by this command
Chmod -R 755
As mentioned by Niels, this happens because the server process user can't write to the Wordpress folder.
But here's the thing a lot of articles don't explain. It's the owner of the php process, not the nginx process. If you try to change the nginx owner, it won't solve this.
To solve it, try running ps aux to see which user owns the php-fpm process. Then check that user is the same user as the owner of the wordpress folder, or can at least write to it. If the user can't write to it, you'll need to change permissions and/or ownership of the folder; or put the two users (server owner and wordpress folder owner) in a common group which can write to the folder; or change php.ini "user" property to a user that can write to the folder.
Changing the ownership of the files worked but only after I logged out of my wordpress website and logged in again. I also restarted the Apache server, but that may not be necessary.
When i open some files(Symfony2.0) with netbeans, this say me:Cannot Lock read Only
i must click right mouse and set every folder the permission to "read and write"
this is big problem because i must set every folder and file.....
how i can fix this my problem permission?
you need add write permissions to the whole folder/subfolders and files.
For example:
chmod -R u+w foldername
-R is to do it for sub-folders and all files (recursive)
u - is for the owner (your user)
+w - is to add write permissions
Perhaps you created symfony2 files using root where netbeans uses user permissions which is currently logged in. Make sure your files/folders belong to user not to the root
If your user is different from the user the server is running as (apache, httpd, www-data for instance), then you must either add yourself to the server group and chmod all the files so group permissions are set to read and write, or chown all the files to you (chown -R user:user) and add your server user to your group.
Also, dont forget to set proper permissions on the cache/ and log/ folders
(they must be writable by the command line user when you do a cache:clear and also writable by the server user)
For more info you can check the "setting up permissions" paragraph on the Installing Symfony Chapter of the Symfony book here:
http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/installation.html