Alright so I'm designing a basic control panel for administering websites over apache and lighthttpd my problem is along the lines of security... Lets say a user decides to be a jerk and moves around the file tree using PHP or ASP or PERL and starts deleting or messing with another users data... it would be a pretty big problem right? I was hoping someone had an idea for how to fix this either using php or linux to ensure users files can't access anything outside their direct tree. However I'd still like my control panel (which is PHP driven with some exec commands) to be able to access, edit and change permissions of their files. I read some information about open_basedir but I'm unfamiliar with how to implement it... Could I simply have my script create a php.ini file in the "base directory" (/var/www/USERNAME/php.ini) with a directive for open_basedir or how would that apply and how would I keep my users from simply editing that file? chown it so only root can write to it? Any help would be appreciated.