so i just set up a testing site www.test.example.com and went through the process of creating a new db, importing my real db (via my php admin) , copied over the settings.php file in the default folder but changed the url to the new database, and created a robots.txt file. this all seemed to work and i had the test site running,
however, as soon as i went to the admin page, there was an error
File system Not writable
The directory sites/test.example.com/files does not exist. You may need to set the correct directory at the file system settings page or change the current directory's permissions so that it is writable.
im a beginner, but something tells me i should not specify the existing files path because that would then run to the main site. i am not sure what to do, i followed simple tutorials for setting that up but nothing even hinted at this happening.
ty
Comments
Permissions on your 'files' folder
Hi ozzie_hazzizzazzes,
This sounds like a simple fix. Drupal is checking to see if it can write to the 'files' folder in your install, and it sounds like the folder doesn't have the right permissions set.
I think what you need to do is change the permissions on the folder Sites > default > files. You can read instructions on how to do this here on the Drupal site: http://drupal.org/getting-started/6/install/set-permissions
Good luck,
~Lindsay
still confused
if i adjusted the permissions so it could write to the files folder, wouldn't this create an unstable test.example.com environment if my mainsite example.com if writing to this same folder?
how do i fix this problem for multisite testing of subdomains? i want the test environment to be as close to being its own entity (isolated) as possible without having to move it to a diff host or buying a diff domain
ty
Hi again, I assumed that your
Hi again,
I assumed that your http://www.test.example.com/ site would have it's own 'files' folder, if you wanted it to be totally isolated. Maybe you need to create one in the location it's looking for, so that it has a different 'files' folder all together.
I guess I assumed that you had copied all the Drupal install folders to the new location for the test site. Is this not what you did? Maybe you could post a link to the instructions that you followed, so I can better understand what you did, and what your file structure looks like.
I don't think the new test Drupal install could be looking in the same place as the original Drupal install for the 'files' folder, since if it was (and this is assuming the original install works), the write permissions would already be set properly.
what i did
hi, thanks for the reply.
as far as my knowledge, i never copied any drupal install folders at any point.
here is what i did verbatim (i used cpanel mainly):
1. create the subdomain www.test.example.com and create a new database example_test with the same user as example_mainsite
2. in my phpadmin, i imported the populated database from example_mainsite into the example_test database.
3. this could be where problems arosse - in the sites folder in drupal, i created a new directory called test.example.com. nothing was in this, but i coped the settings.php file in the sites\default directory over to the test.example.com folder. then i opened this file and changed the url to the database then left everything the same. i also created a robots.txt file here to block search engines but that is irrelevant. the main thing is that in this subdomain folder in sites there is nothing but a settings.php file and robots.txt.
so i never reinstalled drupal or anything. please let me know what i can do here. again, the goal is just to have a sandbox / test site environment where i can fool around, make all sorts of changes but keep these isolated from my main site.
'files' folder exists in 'test.example.com'????
Hi,
Check whether you have 'files' folder at correct path i.e.'/sites/test.example.com/files'
If yes, then make it writable, otherwise create it & make it writable.
Cheers,
Veets
no files folder
hello,
there is no files folder there. so if i create an empty folder called files i will be good? or do i need to copy the existing files folder from sites\default over that already has files inside?
and when you say make it writeable, are you talking about adding a line like :
chmod a+w sites/test.example.com/settings.php
how would i change this outside of a command line?
thx
create it
Yes, if you don't have 'files' folder then create it inside test.example.com and change permissions-
chmod a+w sites/test.example.com/files
For more information on chmod, please read this page.