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I installed Apache2 and PHP5 last night on my fresh Linux Mint machine.

I created a folder and created a simple index.php file with a call to phpinfo() to test out the installation and every works correctly.

However when I open the file with Sublime Text 2 or any other editor, I cannot save my changes. I can use the sudo nano command to open it with super user privileges and I can save just fine.

The same goes with Mercurial. I cannot hg commit because of permissions. I can only sudo hg commit.

Is this how the basic workflow is supposed to be? If I run the chmod command and recursively give 777 permissions to the folders and files within Apache can run it just fine, but if it's a dynamically created file (created by my web app) then it seems Apache cannot access or run it. I have to run the chmod command again!

Any suggestions on what I should do? I feel like 30% of my time is spent on redundant processes that shouldn't be done at all.

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    DO NOT SET MODE 777 - This is a gaping security hole!
    – Daenyth
    Commented Aug 17, 2012 at 16:09
  • @Daenyth: Oh I know, it's just what was easiest for my dev machine. That's why I'm asking the question - I want to know what the proper workflow is.
    – sergserg
    Commented Aug 17, 2012 at 16:10
  • Is the dev server on a virtual machine? If so, I tend to ensure the 'web docs directory' is a shared directory and edit the files on my host machine.
    – JW01
    Commented Aug 17, 2012 at 16:18

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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You've indidcated this is your dev environment, so beyond Daenyth's suggestion of using source control (which you should definitely do) I'd suggest doing a little indirection.

In other words, simply use a symbolic link from /var/www to a working directory that you have permission to work in. Then you can mess around in your working directory as needed and apache will happily serve it up.

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  • I've never heard of a "symbolic link" before. Does that means Apache will run a PHP script from anywhere as long as there is a Symbolic Link set up?
    – sergserg
    Commented Aug 17, 2012 at 19:42
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    @Serg If you have a symlink /var/www -> /home/serg/wwwdev/ and index.php is in wwwdev, then as far as Apache knows, /var/www/index.php exists, as does everything else in wwwdev. So any php scripts that could run under /var/www/ will still run under the new location, because Apache thinks they're still in the first location.
    – Izkata
    Commented Aug 17, 2012 at 21:42
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You should store your code in source control (mercurial for example). Edit it on a local copy and push to your remote repository, then pull the changes to the server as needed.

Make a user/group for the web process to run under, and set the permissions & ownership for that user/group. Any new files will be owned by the process's user, so when configured correctly it should work just fine.

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