title: PHP mkdir failing without errors
body: <p>I've am trying to set up a small file sharing server on my home's local network and am running into some big problems with the uploader. the step it seems to be failing on is the directory creation step however, when I first posted this there were no errors in the Apache log files however, that turned out to be the result of a permission problem with the lag files.</p>
  
  <p>this are the relevant log entries.</p>
  
  <pre><code>[Mon Mar 25 18:43:05 2013] [error] [client 10.0.0.17] PHP Warning:  mkdir(): Permission denied in /server/upload_movie.php on line 10, referer: http://10.0.0.17/upload_movie.html
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>it confuses me because I have run 
  sudo chmod 0777 /server/* 
  sudo chmod 0777 /server
  with /server/ being the rood directory.</p>
  
  <p>my code is as follows</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
  echo "starting". "&lt;br&gt;";
  $allowedExts = array("mp4", "mpg", "avi", "mkv");
  $extension = end(explode(".", $_FILES["uplodedfile"]["name"]));
  echo "filetype parsed". "&lt;br&gt;";
  $path = "/downloads/movies/unsorted/";
  echo "checking upload directory". "&lt;br&gt;";
  if(!is_dir($path)){
      echo "upload directory not found, creating...";
      if (mkdir($path,0777,true))
          {
          echo "directory creation complete". "&lt;br&gt;";
          }
      else
          {
          echo "directory creation failed at ".$path."&lt;br&gt;";
          }
  }
  echo "checking file". "&lt;br&gt;";
  if (false)
    {
    echo "filetype and size passed". "&lt;br&gt;";
    if ($_FILES["uplodedfile"]["error"] &gt; 0)
      {
      header('Location:  upload_failure.php?file='.$_FILES["uplodedfile"]['name'].'&amp;error='.$_FILES["uplodedfile"]["error"]);
      exit();
      }
    else
      {
      echo "Upload: " . $_FILES["file"]["name"] . "&lt;br&gt;";
      echo "Type: " . $_FILES["file"]["type"] . "&lt;br&gt;";
      echo "Size: " . ($_FILES["file"]["size"] / 1024) . " kB&lt;br&gt;";
      echo "Temp file: " . $_FILES["file"]["tmp_name"] . "&lt;br&gt;";
  
      if (file_exists("upload/" . $_FILES["uplodedfile"]["name"]))
        {
         echo $_FILES["file"]["name"] . " already exists on server. ". "&lt;br&gt;";
        }
      else
        {
        echo "creating perminant copy of file". "&lt;br&gt;";
        move_uploaded_file($_FILES["uplodedfile"]["tmp_name"],
        $path."/" . $_FILES["uplodedfile"]["name"]);
        echo "Stored in: " . "movie_uploads/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"]. "&lt;br&gt;";
        }
      }
      header('Location:  upload_success.php?type=movie');
      exit();
    }
  else
    {
    echo "error:&lt;br&gt;";
    echo "Type: " . $_FILES["file"]["type"] . "&lt;br&gt;";
    echo "Name: " . $_FILES["file"]["name"] . "&lt;br&gt;";
    echo "Size: " . ($_FILES["file"]["size"] / 1024) . " kB&lt;br&gt;";
    echo "Temp file: " . $_FILES["file"]["tmp_name"] . "&lt;br&gt;";
    echo "extension: ".$extension;
    exit();
    // echo "Invalid file";
    }
  ?&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>the output is as follows</p>
  
  <pre><code>starting
  filetype parsed
  checking upload directory
  upload directory not found, creating...directory creation failed at /downloads/movies/unsorted/
  checking file
  error:
  Type: 
  Name: 
  Size: 0 kB
  Temp file: 
  extension:
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and the code calling it is </p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;form enctype="multipart/form-data" action="upload_movie.php" method="POST"&gt;
  &lt;input name="uploadedfile" type="file" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
  &lt;input type="submit" value="Upload File" /&gt;
  &lt;/form&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>i have tried all the suggestions in <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5246114/php-mkdir-permission-denied-problem">PHP mkdir: Permission denied problem</a> and I have selinux turned off. I am using fedora 17. the server is being run on an ext4 partition which contains nothing else.</p>
  
  <p>as was suggested in comments, i tried
          $error = error_get_last(); echo $error['message'];
  which yealded 
          Undefined index: file</p>