PHP8, or perhaps mysql, "could not open /dev/crypto"

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I'm REALLY close to having PHP and SQL playing nice with each other. My previous problem turned out to be that my PHP script was logging into SQL as 'pi'@'localhost", rather than 'pi'@'127'0.0.1'. The former has worked perfectly for years on Debian Linux, but I can live with this, since SQL only needs to be accessible from the one system.

But, after making the above change, when I run any PHP script that accesses the mysql database, it throws the error "could not open /dev/crypto", unless the script is run by root. With the previous versions of PHP/SQL I've run under Debian Linux, I only needed to install mysqli. But, to get php8-mod-mysqli working on OpenWRT, I MUST also install php8-mod-mysqlnd which in turn installs php8-mod-openssl. I suspect this error is a result of the openssl install, but it MUST be there for mysqli to work. I assume it is some simple permissions issue, but I have been unable to resolve it in an acceptable manner. As I said, it works fine for the root user, but not for any normal user. So, I changed permissions on /dev/crypto to a+rw, and it now works for everyone, but I suspect that is not good from a security perspective. Surely there is a better way?

2

Have you created a user called "pi"?

3

And you're still not using an official openwrt image, right ?

4

Yes, there is a pi user, and this problem does not occur if permissions on /dev/crypto are set to "a+rw", so I do nothing think it is a problem with SQL permissions.

5

So lets assume you have created a user "pi".
Also, as you have not mentioned it, lets also assume you are running your php scripts from a web server via php-cgi.

I would expect you would have your web server running as the "pi" user. Have you set this up?

If so what web server are you using?

6

Yes, it is the same OpenWRT image. So this could be a result of whatever changes they made in porting to their hardware.

I'm actually reasonably ok with leaving "a+rw" on /dev/crypto, as this is basically a closed, isolated, embedded system, so I'm really not concerned about hacking. But if there is an obvious, "cleaner" solution, I would like to use it.

7

Hi.
Can you write a tutorial if you can make both MariaDB and PHP running?
Thank you.