Centos 6 – Recompile Apache Suexec

By default Centos 6 has Apache (2.2.x) which comes with suexec preinstalled.

The suexec module itself could be found here: /etc/httpd/modules/mod_suexec.so

There is also a suexec wrapper binary, which is by default installed here: /usr/sbin/suexec

 

0. What is the problem with default suexec ?

Imagine you want to activate Suexec for some of your sites, then you will probably use something like that:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host.example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example.com
    ServerName example.com
    ErrorLog logs/example.com-error_log
    CustomLog logs/example.com-access_log combined

    SuexecUserGroup modsecurity modsecurity
</VirtualHost>

After adding such snippet, I started getting the following errors:

 

 

What this error says is that your php binary “/usr/bin/php-cgi” in my case is outside your configured suexec docroot. Basically you can’t execute anythin outside the suexec docroot.

 

By default the suexec docroot is configured to be “/var/www”, which could be easily observed by executing the following command:

 

 

Those are the options our suexec was compiled with.

 

1. What is the fix for this ?

Basically what you need to do in order to fix this is to recompile Suexec with some more wide open docroot.

In order to do that, you may follow the following steps:

1) Install the httpd source RPM from repo

You could find the httpd srpm for your Centos version here:

http://vault.centos.org

In my case I was using the latest Centos 6 – 6.8, and the exact URL was:

http://vault.centos.org/6.8/os/Source/SPackages/httpd-2.2.15-53.el6.centos.src.rpm

 

I installed this SRPM by using the following command:

# rpm -Uvh http://vault.centos.org/6.8/os/Source/SPackages/httpd-2.2.15-53.el6.centos.src.rpm

 

By installing the SRPM, you will get the following file accessible:

/root/rpmbuild/SOURCES/httpd-2.2.15.tar.gz

This is your apache source, which you must untar:

# cd /root/rpmbuild/SOURCES/

# tar xvzf httpd-2.2.15.tar.gz

 

2) Recompile Suexec binary from the Apache source

Now you have the source, so it is time to recompile your Apache with the right Suexec options:

 

If everything goes fine with the compilation, you will have new Suexec binary here:

./support/suexec

or the full path:

/root/rpmbuild/SOURCES/httpd-2.2.15/support/suexec

 

Now you must substitute your original suexec with the newly compiled one:

 

3. Finally restart Apache

# /etc/init.d/httpd restart

 

 

2. Errors and fixes

During the setup you may encounter some errors, here is the what I’ve got.

The following log snippets are from /etc/httpd/logs/suexec.log and were leading to different errors on the site ( usually Internal Server Error 500).

The Error:

The Fix:

When you recompile Suexec, make sure you use the right user for “–with-suexec-caller=apache”

If your apache runs with user different than “apache”, then you need to correct this configuration option and recompile suexec again.

 

The Error:

The Fix:

Make sure you have set correctly the suexec permissions after copying it.

The right thing to do is:

# chmod 4755 /usr/sbin/suexec

# chown root:root /usr/sbin/suexec

 

The Error:

This seems to be very common issue with Suexec which people get to.

Here is what you need to understand about this errors:

 

The first line is telling you what you try to execute:

• Your script is with uid: 514 and gid: 514
• You are trying to execute it with “php-cgi” binary

 

The second line is telling you the actual error about this execution:

Here is the biggest confusion of most people ( I was confused too), and let makes the things more clear

• target uid/gid (514/514)  – These are the permissions of your php script you try to execute
• program (0/0)  – These are the permissions of your php handler binary. In my case (mod_fcgid config) it is: /usr/bin/php-cgi , so only “php-cgi”
• directory(0/0)  – These are the permissions of your “php-cgi” containing directory: “/usr/bin”

 

The Fix:

So, what you need to fix this issue ?  – Make a php wrapper for the current user/group and vhost, which will be defined in your vhost.

Here is how to do it with Apache + mod_fcgid:

1) Create wrapper containing directory

mkdir /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts

 

2) Create sub-directory for your exact vhost / user /group config

mkdir /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/example.com

chown my_user:my_group /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/example.com

3) Create your php wrapper script, which will spawn the php

vim /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/example.com/php-fcgi-starter

This is very important step:

chmod 755 /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/example.com/php-fcgi-starter

chown my_user:my_group /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/example.com/php-fcgi-starter

 

4) Finally edit your VHOST to look like this

 

Voala !