Cannot create file with PHP using NGINX and php-fpm on CentOS 6.4

Question

Using php-fpm, nginx, CentOS 6.4 File being called = register.php I cannot create a file in my directory /.../wingd/profiles

Goal: Generate user profiles by creating files when a user registers for my website.

Error:

Warning: fopen(profiles/test.txt): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /usr/share/nginx/wingd/register.php on line 150

In my register.php I have:

$file = fopen("profiles/test.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");

Things I have tried:

chmod 777 for all files and folders associated (/usr/share/nginx/wingd/profiles all directories listed to the left all are 777 at the moment including 'register.php' (I understand 777 is a security concern and will worry about security later on once I understand the current issue and how to fix)
Have used:

echo 'Current script owner: ' . get_current_user() . "<br>";
                    echo 'posix: '.posix_getuid()."<br>";
                    echo getcwd()."<br>";
                    $last_line = system('whoami', $retval);
                    echo $last_line . " " . $retval;

which has shown me that the script owner and the runner of the script is the nginx user.

Have made nginx the owner for all files/dir mentioned above in #1.
Have looked at /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and see that 'user = nginx' and 'group = nginx' currently
I do not have a /var/www folder and I see a lot of these forum posts about similar issue referring to /var/www (is this an apache thing only?)
Installed strace but am unsure how to use it or read its output of strace php register.php
Was able to su nginx and then use touch command to touch /profiles/test.txt. It did create the file without error
Was advised that I need to find out what php-fpm is using for a username and what its permissions are set to, not sure how to do this. I saw on another stackoverflow topic that php may be using a username of apache and I tried giving that user ownership of files and got no where.

I am not sure what else I can try.

Code:

<?php

include ("config.php");

?>
<html>
<body>

<a href="index.php">Index</a><br>
    <form name="registrationForm" method="post" onsubmit="return validateForm()">
        <input type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Enter username" name="username"><font color="red">*</font>
        <input type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Enter email address" name="email"><font color="red">*</font>
        <input type="password" class="form-control" placeholder="Enter password" name="password"><font color="red">*</font>
        <input type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Enter first name" name="first"><font color="red">*</font>
        <input type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Enter last name" name="last"><font color="red">*</font>
        <input type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Enter zip code" name="zip"><font color="red">*</font>
        <input class="btn btn-default" type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
    </form>

    <?php
    ini_set('display_errors',1);
    error_reporting(E_ALL);

    if (isset($_POST['submit'])){
    //if($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST"){
        $username = $_POST["username"];
        $email = $_POST["email"];
        $password = $_POST["password"];
        $first = $_POST["first"];
        $last = $_POST["last"];
        $zip = $_POST["zip"];

        // Check connection
        if ($db->connect_error) {
            die("Connection failed: ".$db->connect_error);
        }

        //flag to detect if the username exists in db
        $flag = 0;
        $sql = "SELECT username FROM users WHERE username = '".$username."';";
        $result = $db->query($sql);
        if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
            $flag = 1;
        }

        //If the username already exists then alert the user, else insert the record to the db and send user to login.php
        if ($flag == 1){
            echo "<script>alert(\"Sorry, that username is already taken. Please choose another.\");</script>";
        }
        else {
            $sql = "INSERT INTO users (first, last, username, email, password, zip) VALUES ('".$first."', '".$last."', '".$username."', '".$email."', '".$password."', '".$zip."')";
            if ($db->query($sql) === TRUE) {
                //echo "Registration successful";
                //$filename = "/profiles/".$username.".php";
                //chmod($filename,0777);
                echo 'Current script owner: ' . get_current_user() . "<br>";
                echo 'posix: '.posix_getuid()."<br>";
                echo getcwd()."<br>";
                $last_line = system('whoami', $retval);
                echo $last_line . " " . $retval;
                $file = fopen("profiles/test.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");
                //$txt = "This is a user profile for ".$username;
                //fwrite($file, $txt);
                fclose($file);
                //header('Location: login.php');
            } else {
                echo "Registration error, please try again later.";
            }
        }
    }
    $db->close();
    ?>
</body>

Answer 1

So I am no longer going to try to implement my idea by creating potentially hundreds, thousands, etc.. of user profile files on my server but rather follow what seems to be convention now to just have one profile page that is then populated with data based on parameters. That parameter (like user id or username) could then be used in a pull from the database and voila, you dont have TONS of files and is much better also for security concerns. Thanks for all who took the time to read, and/or respond to this to help me. Hope this post will help other users with my same tech stack and initial design thoughts in the future.. Takeaway: Ask how to best solve the problem/idea rather than asking how to best fix the issue you are dealing with, with your current design/implementation idea.

See the following for a better explanation and code snippet: Generate Profile Page Upon Registration - PHP

Cannot create file with PHP using NGINX and php-fpm on CentOS 6.4

Question

1 answers

solution1
0 ACCPTED 2016-11-02 17:05:05

Cannot create file with PHP using NGINX and php-fpm on CentOS 6.4

Question

1 answers

solution1 0 ACCPTED 2016-11-02 17:05:05

solution1
0 ACCPTED 2016-11-02 17:05:05