Q: CHMOD a linux directory using PHP on an apache server Has anyone ever used PHP (proven and successful) to CHMOD a directory through a Web Browser?
My roadblocks are:
(a) PHP script runs as "nobody" from the browser
(b) directory above the one I want to CHMOD is owned by the ftp user and "nobody" does not have write permissions to it
So when I try to chmod 0666 /usr/www/dirOwnedbyFTPuser/dirIamTryingToCHMOD/ I get Permission denied
If you have ever written and successfully run a script to do this, can you share the snipit of code with me? Thanks...been at this for months.

A: Yes, you can chmod from php via a web browser. (yes we all know it can be a bad idea)..
But - you can only chmod files that the php script has permission to use! if your web server runs PHP as nobody, then you can chmod any files owned by "nobody"...

A: Yes it is possible to do this via php.  Usual linux permissions rules apply however so as you are looking to chmod scripts not owned by the apache user (nobody) and the apache user does not have write permissions then one method is to give apache permission to use sudo
Be warned - this is potentially a massive security hole!!!
You can give apache permission to use sudo by editing the sudoers file.  It is recommended that you do not edit this file directly as an error can leave you completely screwed so on my (Ubuntu) system I type
sudo visudo

Then you need to add a line for your "nobody" user.  You can restrict sudo permissions to a particular script or folder so i would recommend writing a shell script to change the permissions and then placing this in a folder away from any other scripts.  That way apache doesn't have complete root privileges on your system (which is a pretty scary thought).  You can also put some code in the shell script to restrict which files can be changed.  
You also need to allow apache to sudo without a password as you have no way of entering the password through php. So the line you would add is something like
nobody ALL=(ALL)NOPASSWD:/path/to/my/script

Then in php you just prefix the command with sudo
passthru ("sudo /path/to/my/script ...");

(there are a few other functions you can use instead of passthru(), was just the first that came to mind)
As I said before, this is potentially very dangerous and whilst the above will work, I have only used it on my own private system before, never on a public production server.  I'm sure plenty of people will have comments on the security of this so I would be interested to hear what other potential pitfalls and security holes there could be with this method.  I know a similar thing can be done using SuExec but am not so familiar with it so if anyone has any pros or cons of SuExec over this method I would be interested to hear them.
Final note:  I would change the apache user from nobody to something like 'apache' or 'www' - probably just being silly but I don't like the idea of giving root permissions to a user called nobody!!!
Hope this helps!

A: http://www.php.net/ftp
You could have php log in as the ftp user and do it. 
