PDO SQLite: read-only database

Question

I have a SQLite database that I am using for a website. The problem is that when I try to INSERT INTO it, I get a PDOException

SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 8 attempt to write a readonly database

I SSH'd into the server and checked permissions, and the database has the permissions

-rw-rw-r--

I'm not that familiar with *nix permissions, but I'm pretty sure this means

• Not a directory
• Owner has read/write permissions (that's me, according to ls -l)
• Group has read/write permissions
• Everyone else only has read permissions

I also looked everywhere I knew to using the sqlite3 program, and found nothing relevant.

Because I didn't know with what permissions PDO is trying to open the database, I did

chmod o+w supplies.db

Now, I get another PDOException:

SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 14 unable to open database file

But it ONLY occurs when I try to execute an INSERT query after the database is open.

Any ideas on what is going on?

Answer 1

This can happen when the owner of the SQLite file itself is not the same as the user running the script. Similar errors can occur if the entire directory path (meaning each directory along the way) can't be written to.

Who owns the SQLite file? You?

Who is the script running as? Apache or Nobody?

Answer 2

The problem, as it turns out, is that the PDO SQLite driver requires that if you are going to do a write operation (INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,DROP, etc), then the folder the database resides in must have write permissions, as well as the actual database file.

I found this information in a comment at the very bottom of the PDO SQLite driver manual page.