permission denied for composer in /usr/local/bin/

Question

I followed the documentation on https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md#globally to install composer globally on arch linux. When I do composer self-update, I get this message:

  [ErrorException]                                                                                    
  rename(/home/hannes/.composer/cache/composer-temp.phar,/usr/local/bin/composer): Permission denied 

The permissions in /usr/local/bin/ (I changed them to 777, but it did not help):

-rwxrwxrwx  1 hannes users 1104202 30. Mai 18:07 composer

In my home directory I did this:

sudo chmod -R 777 .composer/

In /etc/php/php.ini, the open_basedir looks so:

open_basedir = /srv/http/:/home/:/tmp/:/usr/share/pear/:/usr/share/webapps/:/usr/local/bin/

I also tried sudo composer self-update but it did not work as well and is possibly not the right way. (?). What else could I try to make this work?

Answer 1

You could temporarily add the rights to your working user, then update composer w/o errors and then get back the rights.

sudo chmod 777 /usr/bin/
composer self-update
sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/

Answer 2

Use sudo command for any command which writes to root files of folder. It worked for me.

use sudo "your command"

Answer 3

You should check the permissions of the directory /usr/local/bin/, not just the file within. The process has to write both, the file and into the directory which both must be granted.

Apart from that, a general hint: do not always set everything to 777. There is no reason for that and it makes your system vulnerable.

According to the line you posted in the last comment the directory is currently writeable only for the root user himself. That would explain the error you get. You should not make your own user account the owner, Linux systems are multi user environments. Instead think about one of these approaches:

• add the account that is meant to execute the composer to the group root (a user account can belong to several groups) and make the directory group writeable
• change the groups ownership of the directory to a group that account is a member of and make the directory group writeable
• use the sudo utility to install and update the composer utility

The last option is the typically chosen and preferred one. It leaves permissions as they are (conservative) and only uses raised privileges for system maintenance jobs like installation and upgrade.

Answer 4

This did the job for me on Centos 7

chown -R apache:apache path/to/composer
chmod 755 path/to/composer

Answer 5

Now, there is a package for composer in arch linux which works for me:

sudo pacman -S composer

Answer 6

On Ubuntu SRV 16.04

FIRST

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/composer

AND

cd ~/.cache/composer
chmod 755 composer-temp.phar
sudo mv composer-temp.phar /usr/local/bin/composer