从命令行和crontab执行php时权限被拒绝

Question

I am attempting to create a cronjob under the user apache, but I get permission denied errors for files that are accessed by the program. The specific file that my php script cannot access is /var/www/html/amazon/amazon_data.txt. Here is me checking the permissions, and testing to see if I can write to the file:

bash-3.2$ whoami
apache
bash-3.2$ ls -l /var/www/html/amazon/amazon_data.txt
-rwxrwxr-- 1 apache apache 1082 Apr  3 15:43 /var/www/html/amazon/amazon_data.txt
bash-3.2$ vi /var/www/html/amazon/amazon_data.txt

Now I try to run a script that tries to access the file I get this warning:

bash-3.2$ /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/amazon/amazon_inventory_sync.php
PHP Warning:  Module 'json' already loaded in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning:  fopen(amazon_data.txt): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /var/www/html/amazon/amazon_inventory_sync.php on line 26

Warning: fopen(amazon_data.txt): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /var/www/html/amazon/amazon_inventory_sync.php on line 26
Unable to open amazon_data.txt!bash-3.2$

Why can I access and edit the file with the user just fine, but not in the php script when executing it via command line? There is no issue when I run the script from a browser.

Edit: I can run it fine under the user soh, who is in the group apache. apache is also in the group apache.

Answer 1

The issue was due to the file being requested not being a literal location. This is the code which did not work:

$filename = "amazon_data.txt";
$file = fopen($filename, "a+") or die("Unable to open $filename!
");

This may work fine when the script is run remotely via HTTP, but it may cause issues when running cron jobs or execution in the terminal. Changing the $filename to be the full location fixed this issue.

$filename = dirname(__FILE__)."/"."amazon_data.txt";
$file = fopen($filename, "a+") or die("Unable to open $filename!
");

Why does this happen? I am guessing instead of the php file's folder being used, it was using a directory which the apache user did not have access to, such as the current working directory that the command in terminal was being executed from.