PHP's chmod does not work

[rpcarnell]

This problem has been discussed before, but no one seems to have a solution.

chmod does not work with files inside the Apache server. I thought it'd work with everything inside /var/www/ , but it isn't doing it, and this a serious problem. I need to set certain httpdocs directories to 0777 for a few seconds and then back to 0755.

For those familiar with php, the command is like this: chmod('/var/www/directory', 0777);
It is similar to the normal chmod, but there are, as you can see, differences.

All these directories are called httpdocs, but being different websites, they are in different directories and have different users, but even then they belong to the same group.

I went as far as altering the sudoers file to allow user apache to run chmod without the need for a password. Not even that is working.

Anyone has a solution to this?

[coopstah13]

first, take apache out of sudoers, you just made it so if your website was compromised, someone would have non-password protected root access to your machine

second, check ownership of directory www, to make sure it is owned by apache user and writeable

third, make sure all files under that are owned and writeable by apache user

fourth, i believe there is a security setting that doesn't let you execute stuff by default, but i could be misremembering