[SOLVED] PHP "system" command as root?

[Socratea]

Hi Experts,

I'm building a server in which I want to use R (statistics program) to generate graphs based on user input.
I have an R script which creates a graph and saves it as jpeg, now I want to run it on my server (localhost for now, I'm testing).
Thus I want to create a jpeg (called test.jpeg below) in my /var/www/html/test/ folder which is then displayed on a webpage.

In general this is what I want to do;

Code: [Select]

<?php 
if(isset($_POST['analyses'])){
$command='R CMD BATCH testscript.r';
system($command);
echo '<img src="test.jpeg" width="458" height="458" alt="pic" />';
}

 ?>
However of course the jpeg cant be written to  /var/www/html/test/ without root privileges.
After conducting some web searches I found this recommendation - I should put the bash command:

echo "PASSWORD" | sudo -u root -S COMMAND

in the php system function.

However PCLOS does not use sudo. Now I could setup a sudoers list but I'd rather stick to the philosophy of PCLOS.

Does anybody have any tips on how I can solve this?

Your time is greatly appreciated,

[Socratea]

I should have just gone to bed before I asked that question. 

This can ofcourse be solved by simply setting file permissions.

Run <?php exec('whoami') ?> to find out who you are, for me this was non-surprisingly 'apache'

Then remove all permissions of website folder
chmod o-rwx *

Then set user to owner
chown apache *

Then give user read,write and execute permissions
chmod u=rwx *


Done.

[Wildman]