But for really large shared hosts, I don't think that is feasible.  How
are you going set up 100,000 prisons on a server?

> I'm +1 on removing safe mode in PHP 5, and encourage the use of
> system-level sandboxes/prisons instead.
>
>  - Stig
>
> On Sat, 2002-05-11 at 17:39, Ilia A. wrote:
> > In the process of writing an installer in PHP for one of my projects I've come
> > in contact with a number of servers running PHP with safe_mode enabled.
> >
> > As you can probably imagine the installer at first broke completely because of
> > safe_mode restrictions. Despite the restriction I was able to write php code
> > that was able to bypass safe_mode restriction in every single case, which
> > should tell you just how "safe" that option is.
> >
> > There are numerous ways to bypass it, rely on file system utils if they are in
> > the path, make the script copy itself and then write stuff as webserver,
> > install a small script into cgi-bin directory that will do the same thing
> > etc...
> > The number of ways to bypass this feature are too numerous to list here.
> >
> > I should also point out that safe_mode implementation has numerous bugs in
> > every PHP version including the very latest CVS.
> >
> > It is my belief that safe_mode gives people who use false sense of security by
> > "supposedly" securing their webserver from their own users, which is
> > pointless since a "dedicated user" can cause plenty of damage by using
> > while(1) include $PHP_SELF; etc...
> > In addition safe_mode makes the developer life extremely difficult since it
> > blocks the most common operations that ARE ALLOWED by the webserver's file
> > permissions, why does PHP take on the role that is not done in any other
> > programming language?
> > It is nearly impossible to write a PHP file system code that would work with
> > safe_mode it is much easier to just release C/Perl/Python etc.. code that
> > will do the very same thing and run via a command line or the user's cgi-bin
> > directory.
> > For example, if a user uploads test.php with their FTP and test.php creates a
> > file, it will no longer be able to read that file under safe_mode since the
> > uid of the script and the file it created differ.
> >
> > IMHO safe_mode should be removed from the php core, because it lulls web
> > server admins into false sense of security thus not taking the time to setup
> > proper file system permissions in addition to severely crippling the PHP's
> > file system functionality.
> >
> > If the safe_mode like functionality remains it should simply block all file
> > system and shell execution code since with it most of that code becomes
> > useless anyway.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Ilia
> >
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>
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