Can't write/delete files using nginx + php5-fpm (nginx is www-data, same as folder with files)

Question

I can’t figure out why PHP can’t write/delete files. I believe I have everything setup properly, but clearly I’m missing something obvious. Running Ubuntu 12.10.

nginx:

root@DonaldAllen:/# ps aux|grep nginx|grep -v grep
root     24427  0.0  0.3  79236  1608 ?        Ss   04:59   0:00 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx
www-data 24428  0.0  0.9  82372  4924 ?        S    04:59   0:00 nginx: worker process
www-data 24429  0.0  0.9  82372  4924 ?        S    04:59   0:00 nginx: worker process
www-data 24430  0.0  0.9  82372  4924 ?        S    04:59   0:00 nginx: worker process
www-data 24431  0.0  1.1  82708  5656 ?        S    04:59   0:00 nginx: worker process

php5-fpm:

root@DonaldAllen:/# ps aux|grep php|grep -v grep
root     24415  0.0  1.2 278244  6056 ?        Ss   04:59   0:00 php-fpm: master process (/etc/php5/fpm/php-fpm.conf)
1000     24416  0.5  4.5 291636 22816 ?        S    04:59   0:02 php-fpm: pool www
1000     24417  0.5  4.4 291328 22448 ?        S    04:59   0:02 php-fpm: pool www
1000     24432  0.2  3.7 287480 18676 ?        S    04:59   0:01 php-fpm: pool www

/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:

server {
        listen   80;

        root /var/www/subdomain.site.com;
        index index.html index.htm index.php;

        server_name subdomain.site.com;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php;
        }

        fastcgi_intercept_errors off;


        location ~ \.php$ {
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
                fastcgi_index index.php;
                include fastcgi_params;
                fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
                fastcgi_param PYRO_ENV production;
        }
}

/etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

user = donaldallen
listen = /var/run/php5-fpm.sock
listen.owner = www-data
listen.group = www-data
listen.mode = 0666

And the directory with my website files:

drwxr-xr-x  9 www-data www-data 4096 Apr  9 04:43 subdomain.site.com/

Simmoniz · Answer

You have to set folder owner manually and recursivly I guess ?

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/subdomain.site.com

That will work for now, but own to make it work for new files in the future as well…? I don’t know…

michael.chesterton · Answer

php-fpm needs write access, not nginx, and its process is running as uid 1000, not as www-data

so you could chown -R 1000 /var/www/subdomain.site.com

ideally you would limit what directory www-data and php-fpm have write access to, maybe limit it to an upload directory for example.

david.rahrer · Answer

What exactly is the situation, what is the script or app and what is it trying to do that requires write/delete? On Wordpress, for instance, I have to add group write permissions to the uploads folder before it will work, i.e. 775 instead of 755.

Andrew SB · Answer

Are you seeing any error messages in the relevant log files? Check:

/var/log/nginx/error.log
/var/log/php5-fpm.log

Question

Can't write/delete files using nginx + php5-fpm (nginx is www-data, same as folder with files)