Public File System not Working with Multisite

Same for me. If it's alright I'm changing this to critical, since this makes imagecache useless on any multisite configuration using public file downloads--which I'm guessing is most multisites out there. I'm in a real bind because I have to use a public file system in order for some of my necessary modules to work, but I also depend on imagecache: help!

there's not enough detail here to have any idea what's going on. are you using clean URLs? what do the output URLs look like? what should they look like?

I appologize. Firs of all, here is my directory structure:

Root
  -Sites
    -www.mysite1.org
      -files
    -www.mysite2.org
      -files

You can see here that the files folder is not in the default location for a drupal single site environment, which would be Root/files. Instead it is at Root/Sites/mysite1/files.

Secondly, I am using clean urls, and the urls that imagecache is outputting (where it is trying to find the cached images) is correct and identical in both private and public transfer mode; the cached image url's are printed like so:

http://www.mysite1.org/sites/www.mysite1.org/files/imagecache/frontpage_pictures/picture.jpg

In public transfer mode the imagecache folder and resized images are simply not created (at least not where expected... I've tried probing around a bit on my ftp server and haven't found them anywhere).

Please let me know if I can provide any further useful information.

Thank you so much for your help,

Jordan

Changing this to active; please let me know if I can assist with more information.

Jordan

Any help?

Well, I just set up a fresh multisite with nothing but image_cache (and default modules) installed, and I had no problem using the public transfer method (setup was xampp on Windows machine). I'm guessing that some other module is screwing things up here? Must be something fairly common though, as multiple people have had this problem.

Any ideas? I will post a full list of modules I am running, and try turning things off methodically, but it'll take some time, as I've got circa 75 modules installed on the site that's having trouble.

The above test was run using:

Drupal 5.16
ImageCache 5.x-2.3
ImageAPI 5.x-1.5-beta1
GD Library: bundled (2.0.34 compatible)

Windows XP Service Pack 3
XAMPP 1.6.6a
PHP 5.2.5
MySQL 5.0.51a
Web Server: Apache/2.2.8 (Win32) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.8g mod_autoindex_color PHP/5.2.5

Directory structure:

Root
  -sites
    -site_1
      -files
      -themes
      -modules

File System Path: sites/site_1/files

Clean URL's enabled.

Default mysql database storage engine set to InnoDB.

I tried uninstalling every module on my production site that's having trouble, and reinstalling exactly the same modules that "worked" successfully in my test freshly-installed site. Was careful to uninstall and re-install image-cache and image-api in the correct order. NO CHANGE.

I then decided to go through imagecache.module and check to see how public and private transfer methods were handled differently. Found this block of code:

function imagecache_create_url($presetname, $path) {
  $path = _imagecache_strip_file_directory($path);
  switch (variable_get('file_downloads', FILE_DOWNLOADS_PUBLIC)) {
    case FILE_DOWNLOADS_PUBLIC:
      return url(file_directory_path() .'/imagecache/'. $presetname .'/'. $path, NULL, NULL, TRUE);
    case FILE_DOWNLOADS_PRIVATE:
      return url('system/files/imagecache/'. $presetname .'/'. $path, NULL, NULL, TRUE);
  }
}

Changed case FILE_DOWNLOADS_PUBLIC to be the same as case FILE_DOWNLOADS_PRIVATE and Voila: It worked!. I am now thinking that this must be a path issue of some sort? Assuming that this is the case, I'm changing the status on this to bug report. Correct me if I'm being premature (or just wrong).

davidlerin, wait so is your problem with public or private file transfers? because what that change would do is effectively switch you back to public transfers.

Hi drewish. My problem was with public file transfers: the private method was working okay. I think the switch I made is the opposite of what you are thinking: I set both cases above to be the same as FILE_DOWNLOADS_PRIVATE, not public. I was then able to switch the file transfer to public, and imagecache continued to work, because it was using the PRIVATE method path.

I don't know why this is an issue with multisite installations, and not single site, and I don't know why it was not an issue with my freshly installed test site...

@davidlerin

Thank you very much, your method help me to fix the same problem that occurred on 6.x-2.0-beta8 (on a single site) as well =)

I think this is really the same issue as #366177: Imagecache seems to work only if the file system is set to private

For multisite D5 sites, a recent ImageAPI upgrade can cause similar problems. If you don't have the .htaccess file problem, see #441586: Patch for 6.x-1.x-dev breaks imageapi_imagemagick on multisite configurations on Linux for info & patch.