Strange 'sudoers' behavior

For testing purposes, apache has been granted full, no password access in /etc/sudoers (apache ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL). SELINUX is disabled.

This will all be hardened after everything starts working.

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The weirdness is below:

[root@archive bin]# runuser -l apache -c '/bin/mt -f /dev/nst0 status'

SCSI 2 tape drive:

File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.

Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x46 (LTO-4).

Soft error count since last status=0

General status bits on (41010000):

BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN

[root@archive bin]# runuser -l apache -c '/bin/mt -f /dev/nst1 status'

/dev/nst1: Permission denied

[root@archive bin]# /bin/mt -f /dev/nst1 status

SCSI 2 tape drive:

File number=-1, block number=-1, partition=0.

Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x0 (default).

Soft error count since last status=0

General status bits on (50000):

DR_OPEN IM_REP_EN

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TLDR:

If there's a tape in the LTO4 drive, the status is returned correctly from PHP running 'mt -f [dev] status'. "Permission denied" is returned if there is no tape in the LTO4 drive, or the drive is LTO6. The terminal displays the expected behavior.

Versions:

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.