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I'm running Debian 7 on my VPS and I want to have a PHP scripting that would allow me to do the following thing:

I have a MTA server and I have logfiles in a separate directory (/root/mta/resources/logs) and the website is obviously in /var/www, how would I go around moving the log.txt file from the MTA location to /var/www ?

Is it possible to do this via PHP only or .sh would also be required ?

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  • linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/… I've read the article but it seems to dangerous to try it without asking for advice first. Commented Jul 1, 2014 at 10:40
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    And why didn't that work for you? Pro tip: don't let the community go on a fishing expedition to find out the needed information from you. Commented Jul 1, 2014 at 10:40

2 Answers 2

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Try to do a symbolic link with: ln -s /root/mta/resources/logs/log.txt /var/www/log.txt

For security issue you can add a .htaccess:

<Files /var/www/log.txt>
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from all
</Files>
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7 Comments

I hope you did not just make that log file publicly available.
This technically answers the question. It also completely ignores the fact that this is at best "not the only thing that needs to be done" and at worst "a terrible idea and a huge security risk".
@PeeHaa This is not the question here. The question is: How to be able to read a file which is out of the document_root? The security issue is another question.
Neither is the question how can I be hold liable for leaking my users data yet you still do it. Your point?
Yes, that security is another question is technically true. However it's a question that the OP may not know needs to be asked, and as such at the very least it needs to be mentioned that "hey! this might be a bad idea! go read up on X"
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If you want to move a file from point A to point B using php, just use system to execute the appropriate mv or ln command line. There's no need for all the error-checking in the script you link to (in your comments).

Before you do it, find out (a) whether this particular log file can safely be placed under the document root, (b) whether you really need to put it there (why not just access it where it lives now?), and (c) whether it's even going to work: if you simply move the file, you can expect the server to create a new one.

You should probably be asking about how to solve your actual problem, because this doesn't sound like a solution you ought to succeed at.

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2 Comments

Yup, I just read about system(), now, I wanted to move it because I thought it is NOT possible to read from a .txt file that isn't located in /var/www. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Apache can only read under document root, but your PHP process can generally reach anything. What problem are you actually trying to solve?

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