Directory permissions changed by apache via PHP

Hi,

I'm having an issue where a PHP page running under apache alters destructively a directory's permissions. A very simple script that lists a directory's contents seems to cause this:

<?php
  $cmd = "ls -la /Volumes/ 2>&1";
  exec($cmd, $execOut, $exitCode);
  echo "<PRE>EXIT CODE = $exitCode<BR/>";
  foreach($execOut as $line) {
    echo "$line <BR/>";
  }
  echo "</PRE>";
?>

PHP:

When I hit this page it usually succeeds, but it sometimes (randomly) produces this output:

EXIT CODE = 1
ls: myshare: Permission denied 
total 8 
drwxrwxrwt@  4 root  admin   136 Jun 14 12:34 . 
drwxrwxr-t  30 root  admin  1088 Jun  4 13:09 .. 
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  admin     1 Jun 11 16:05 galenhd -> / 

Code (markup):

When it succeeds it looks like:

EXIT CODE = 0
total 40 
drwxrwxrwt@  4 root   admin    136 Jun 14 12:34 . 
drwxrwxr-t  30 root   admin   1088 Jun  4 13:09 .. 
drwx------   1 galen  staff  16384 Jun 14 09:28 myshare 
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root   admin      1 Jun 11 16:05 galenhd -> / 

Code (markup):

There should be no reason why consecutive hits of the same page should do something functionally different.
I'm pretty confident this bug/issue involves Apache to some degree, because when I take Apache out of the equation, for example by running PHP standalone, I don't see any problems.

OTHER DETAILS:

• Running on mac Snow Leopard
• using out-of-the-box Apache and PHP on mac
• mounted myshare directory via Finder (i.e. smb://myserver/myshare via Go-->Connect to Server... menu)
• If command is changed to remove "-l" option, it doesn't cause failure
• SMB server is Windows 2003, although I've also tested this on a linux SMB server, and it also fails, so I don't think the server is at fault
• Running the same PHP script from the command-line doesn't cause problem -- it only fails when run under Apache
• Running "sudo ls -la /Volumes" repairs permissions on directory
• Failure has been occurring for me roughly 1 out of every 20 page hits, but in a random fashion

Surely someone has run into this seemingly simple use case?

Thanks,
Galen

 

I've narrowed this problem down to the default Apache/PHP installation on Snow Leopard. Here is what FAILS on the code in the previous post:

SNOW LEOPARD out-of-the-box
user$ apachectl -v
Server version: Apache/2.2.14 (Unix)
Server built: Feb 10 2010 22:22:39
-------------------
php -v
PHP 5.3.1 (cli) (built: Feb 11 2010 02:32:22)
Copyright (c) 1997-2009 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2009 Zend Technologies


The following configurations WORK:

MAMP (on Snow Leopard)
/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/apachectl -v
Server version: Apache/2.0.63
Server built: Mar 5 2010 14:55:50
---------
PHP 5.2.2

Apache/PHP on Ubuntu
apache2ctl -v
Server version: Apache/2.2.12 (Ubuntu)
Server built: Mar 9 2010 22:11:44
-------------
php -v
PHP 5.2.10-2ubuntu6.4 with Suhosin-Patch 0.9.7 (cli) (built: Jan 6 2010 22:56:44)
Copyright (c) 1997-2009 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2009 Zend Technologies


So this appears to be an Apache or a PHP bug in out-of-the-box Snow Leopard.

All of the above configurations were pointing to the exact same SMB share...