Path to private directory

I have just installed a new ISPConfig 3.0.5.1 server, and I am trying to get to grips with the fact that I can no longer read or write to the parent of the web root (via "../").

Searching the forums I understand that this was a security hazard and rightly blocked, and I should be using /var/www/domain.net/private instead. That works fine, except that that will need hard coding into a lot of scripts across many sites.

What I would like is an easy way of doing this, either by programmatically determining the current site, or by having a standard path that works across all sites. Failing that I could just add a "sitename" file in the webroot and read that in every script, but again that is not ideal.

I am using Perl, not PHP.

Any suggestions gratefully received!

Thanks,

 

Thanks Till, but I am using Perl not PHP. Using the equivalent realpath command in Perl...

Code:

use Cwd 'realpath';
my $dir = realpath("../private");
print $dir;

... returns "/private", which is not correct or usable, as it would require private to be a subdir off the web root. Whether this is a Perl issue, or something peculiar to ISPConfig, I have no idea.

Which works, but would need hardcoding into every script on every site. I need a way of programmatically calculating the path to the private directory.

 

Yes, you're right, the environment variables have it.

Thank you!