Description of problem: Each time we install a php update it changes the permissions on /var/lib/php/session to 755 Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): php-5.1.6-27.el5 How reproducible: Always. Steps to Reproduce: 1. change permissions for /var/lib/php/session to say 1733 2. install php update 3. permissions are changed back to 755 Actual results: Permissions are changed to 755 on update. Expected results: Permissions should be left alone. Additional info: We run suPHP on a shared platform. This requires users other than apache to be able to write session files in /var/lib/php/session Everyone's sessions break when we install a php update and we have to fix the permissions on this directory.
The behaviour described is expected: the directory is under package management control so any changes to permissions, owernship, etc, should not be expected to be preserved across package upgrades. If you want to use a directory with different permissions you'll have to create one and change the session.save_path setting in php.ini. I'm not sure I see any other solution here.
Looks like you are correct: there is really no way to prevent this from happening with rpm. I wish I could modify permissions on files/directories under package management without having my toes stepped on but I suppose that is a bit of a philosophical argument and could bring up a number of other issues. Thanks anyhow!
I think you can use ACLs to do this (setfacl), which RPM may not overwrite, but using a different directory is probably better.