what does posix_getlogin() return? perhaps you aren't really running the
script as root...
posix_getlogin() return a empty string. However, the script is definitely
running as root. The same script is creating directories in another user's
account using mkdir()
If the script UID is changed from root to the local user, the mkdir fail
with a permission error. The script is also doing a copy() into another user's
file system which also fails if the UID is not room. Everything works except
chown() and as I said in the original post, the same back ticked
chown abc data; that works in a perl script in the same directory does not
work in a PHP script. I have also tried
system("chown egovdemo:nobody /fullpath/htdocs");
Urb