[CentOS] File access in Apache 2.4 (clarification)

Folks

I'm having file-access problems in Apache 2.4 under Centos 7.  In particular:

- I have a file that's readable to every user and every application, 
(writeable by only one user), but my CGI scripts cannot read it.

- Some of my CGI scripts need temporary storage for some files.  They 
are, for example, some internal log files, tnat get cleaned up over 
time, but I want to be able to look at them (as root).  Where would 
you suggest they be placed?  I've tried /tmp/my_private_files/, and 
/var/tmp/my_private_files/, but Apache fails to find even the directory.

Here's some extra information
SELINUX is disabled.

I modified my CGI script to report where in the path to 
/tmp/my_private_files/temp_log.log the process failed.  The Perl code I ran is:


   my $x = "";
   print STDERR "Trying to read /tmp/ramdisk/keys.txt\n";
   for (split /\//, "/tmp/ramdisk/keys.txt") {
     next unless $_;
     $x .= "/$_";
     print STDERR "Test $x, " , (-e $x?"exists":"does not exist"), "\n";
   }

And the output in the http error log for this virtual user, 
(timestamp and other error log data stripped) was:

AH01215: Trying to read /tmp/ramdisk/keys.txt
AH01215: Test /tmp, exists
AH01215: Test /tmp/ramdisk, does not exist
AH01215: Test /tmp/ramdisk/keys.txt, does not exist

Using the "dir -l" command as root, I discover:

dir -l / | grep tmp
  drwxrwxrwt.  16 root root  4096 Nov 21 08:35 tmp

dir -l /tmp | grep ramdisk
  drwxrwxrwt  2 root root    140 Nov 21 08:35 ramdisk

dir -l /tmp/ramdisk | grep keys.txt
  -rw-r--r-- 1 user1 user1 11829 Nov 21 08:29 keys.txt


Any suggestions?

PS:  Centos 6 had no such problems, and the file locations worked just fine.

David