Question: I chmod'ed the directory to 777, same with the directory contents. Still, I get a "permission denied" error. Does PHP throw this error if apache is not the group/owner, regardless of the file permissions? Here's the call that's failing:

```
rename('/correct/path/to/dir/1', '/correct/path/to/dir/2');

```

Answer: 
You're editing the higher level directory, so the PHP user needs to have write access to that directory.
to clarify, php can only rename directories it has actual ownership over:

```
-rwxrwxrwx user   user   temp/
-rwxr-xr-x apache apache temp2/
-rw-r--r-- user   user   script.php

```

assume script.php is trying to rename these two directories:

```
// this operation fails as PHP (running as apache) does not own "temp",
// despite having write permissions    
rename('temp', 'temp.bak');

// this operation is successful as PHP owns "temp2"
rename('temp2, 'temp.bak'); 

```