Directory is not writable - CentOS specific Bug

damse

So, this is not my first flarum install.

I have a running (older version) flarum setup on a CentOS server that I need to migrate in the foreseable feature.

Instead of making the migration at once, I tought of making a dry-run first, to see if everything would go smoothly.

My problem is, on a fresh centOS install, only running apache, mariadb, phpmyadmin and php7.1, I cannot pass the "Wrong Permissions" page.

Things I've tried:

chmod the directories specified by flarum;
chmod to 777 all the directory (that does not work either... I keep getting "The /var/www/html/*** directory is not writable." etc)
chown to apache user;
chown to regular user;
chown to freaking root and set only specific permissions for assets, storage, etc;
reinstalled apache;

I tried installing on a ubuntu server... and it worked at first try. I don't understand why.

I don't know what else to do...

Anyone has any ideas?

luceos

Although it seems user apache is the right one, try to identify which one is being used by creating a phpinfo page.

damse

luceos

I believe you are refering to this:

User/Group apache(48)/48

Either way, with 777 permissions shouldn't work?

luceos

SELinux might be fighting you, see https://blog.lysender.com/2015/07/centos-7-selinux-php-apache-cannot-writeaccess-file-no-matter-what/

Setting 777 is never a solution 🙂 Great thing you are still trying to solve it 👍️

damse

luceos

Yep, I know, but it was part of my troubleshooting process.

Regarding the issue at hand. Thanks for the pointers. I'll leave the steps I had to do in order to fix the issue so new users can find it easily.

I was logged in as root at the time and issued the following commands:

# Give permissions to apache
chown apache:apache -R /var/www/html/flarum

#Allow SELinux to serve content
chcon -t httpd_sys_content_t /var/www/html/flarum/ -R

#Allow write to specific dirs
chcon -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t /var/www/html/wflarum
chcon -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t /var/www/html/flarum/assets/ -R
chcon -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t /var/www/html/flarum/storage/ -R

As an alternative, you can set SELinux to "Permissive":

# Edit SELinux config
nano /etc/selinux/config

#Change from enforcing to permissive:
SELINUX=permissive

We then need to reboot and check operation mode with getenforce:

[root@s5 ~]# getenforce Permissive

And finally change flarum ownership to apache:

chown apache:apache -R /var/www/html/flarum

Thanks luceos for pointing me in the right direction!

Cheers