PHP / MySQL authentication question

Hello,

I've been building a small CMS for a collegiate organization that I'm involved in and have run into a small problem. The CMS will be hosted on our school's public web server meaning that everyone in the university community has shell access to the machine. In all past php related projects, I've had the liberty to have the database password in clear text in my code, but I'm afraid that doing so on a machine with 20,000 user accounts is just asking for trouble (anyone with half a brain and too much free time can cd into my public_html directory and cat my code.) Does anyone have any ideas on how I could secure this password?

Thanks.

P.S - I don't have root access and the sysadmins are usually unwilling to make server configuration changes.

You should keep included files such as this one outside your public_html directory.

Nobody but you should be able to do a directory list on your home directory, so anywhere under there besides public_html should be fine.

If you still have problems you probably don't want to host any site there anyhow.

You should keep included files such as this one outside your public_html directory.

Nobody but you should be able to do a directory list on your home directory, so anywhere under there besides public_html should be fine.

If you still have problems you probably don't want to host any site there anyhow.