When loading a page that uses Simplepie, I was getting several errors like this:

./cache/b17a71adcdd57e184eaa6907ffa8b553.spc is not writeable in /home/account/public_html/sites/all/modules/simplepie/lib/simplepie.inc on line 1773.

This is similar (maybe identical) to http://drupal.org/node/337103 . I'm reporting it again because that thread got sidetracked with related issues.

As reported in that thread,

* I DO have Simplepie configured to use the correct directory
* the directory exists
* the directory has correct permissions

At http://www.example.com/admin/settings/simplepie :

the page reads:

SimplePie Core cache location:

cache/simplepie

Relative to files directory.

Note that this settings page specifies that what you enter here should be relative to the files directory.

I was receiving the "not writeable" errors even though

~/public_html/sites/default/files/cache/simplepie

exists and has permissions of 755 (cache and simplepie both have 755).

Acting on comment 13 in the other thread, I went to the root of my Drupal install, and created a new directory structure and gave it write permissions:

cd ~/public_html/
mkdir cache
mkdir cache/simplepie
chmod 755 cache
chmod 755 cache/simplepie/

The error messages went away.

At the least, changing the Simplepie Settings page to say "in the root of your Drupal install" instead of "relative to your files directory" would help. However, I think putting the cache inside files is probably the better approach, and there's probably a line of code somewhere that's causing the disconnect between what the admin page describes and how it works.

Thanks!