"Erwin Moller"
<since_humans_read_this_I_am_spammed_too_much@spam yourself.com> wrote in
message news:45b0964b$0$330$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
> Colin McKinnon wrote:
>
>> Aaron Gray wrote:
>>
>>> "Toby Inkster" <usenet200701@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote in message
>>> news:bs7484-dcj.ln1@ophelia.g5n.co.uk...
>>>> Aaron Gray wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> The signal in the shell script works fine from root but will not work
>>>>> when
>>>>> called from PHP.
>>>>
>>>> As Jerry indicated, you are probably trying to fix the wrong problem.
>>>> If
>>>> we knew *why* you were trying to do this, then we might be able to tell
>>>> you an alternative to reloading Apache in the first place.
>>>
>>> Okay, I am working on putting to gether a server administration program
>>> thats written in PHP and runs in Apache. It needs to reload the
>>> configuration after adding, removing, or modifying the virtual web sites
>>> Apache is serving.
>>>
>>> The only simple way I can think of is to do a reload every 10 minutes or
>>> every hour, as a cron job, or so.
>>
>> You are writing a server administration program but you don't know how
>> permissions work. Am I the only one to feel a bit worried at this point?
>
> No Colin, you are not alone. ;-)
> I think a security audit may be in place after the project is delivered.

Yes. I am not sure over this either. Other server admin software ie
ISPConfig uses a separate instillation of Apache only running the admin
software, and WebMin uses a Perl based http server running as root.

As my main remit is to provide a community web server administration system
and allowing for the fact of needing to run other PHP scripts this is indeed
a problem.

I am biased towards using either a separate instillation of Apache running
with extra permissions or doing a Perl based solution.

Any other solutions are welcome; if there are any.

Thanks for your critisism,

Aaron