Maybe just adding your "sysadmin" to group www-data and changing mode of this file to 660 would solve the problem?

Another solution is changing mode to something like 666, but it's not too secure ;)

One more solution: (i'm using this, but it's a bit complicated) CGI script is a "client" and there's a server process in the system which is run on appropriate UID and wrotes files to the disk.

Besides, what sysadm he is if he hasn't root access??? ;->

-- 
Daniellek
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