By wrack on

Hi,

I have installed Drupal here http://www.patel.com.au/drupal

Username and password both are "demousr" without the quotes and all in lowercase.

Anyways when I login as administrator and go to settings I get a warning in RED saying

"The directory files is not writable.".

I get the similar error when I go to User Config

"The directory files/pictures is not writable."

I know for the fact that the directories in question are there and have full permissions. What permissions do I need to set to make this work..? I am linux hosting so permissions will be something like 755 or 765 or 777.

Please help.

Cheers :)

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.6.x

Comments

styro’s picture

styro commented

doesn't mean the webserver can :)

I'd recommend having a read through here: http://drupal.org/node/34022

--
Anton
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wrack’s picture

wrack commented

I have read through the thing and my understanding is,

I uploaded and created DRUPAL and all the subdirectory using FTP account who is an admin so I can see that it's got enough permissions.

But the actual website is running under WWW user (whatever that is in Apache/Linux environment). It also mentioned somewhere to use a PHP file to see what name it's running under and then use similar type of script to change the WWW user permissions which would make those errors go away.

Please correct me if I am wrong. If all true then can someone please point me to the right script to do so..?

Cheers :)

styro’s picture

styro commented

Do you have phpmyadmin? If so it has a built in phpinfo() page to tell you who the webserver runs as and a ton of other stuff. If not, you'll need to somehow run the phpinfo() function - you could do that by uploading a file with it in it, or by putting in a page on your site (using the PHP input filter).

The best thing is usually to make the group ownership of the files directory to be the group the webserver runs as (this requires root permissions to do), then change the permissions of that directory to be group writable.

If you can't do that you'll probably need to make the directory world writable.

--
Anton
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wrack’s picture

wrack commented

No I don't have phpmyadmin.

I also tried to give 777 access to the directory but no joy so I changed them back to the way they were..!

AccidentalTechie’s picture

AccidentalTechie commented

Styro said:
> Do you have phpmyadmin? If so it has a built in phpinfo() page to tell you who the webserver runs as and a ton of other stuff.

This must be configured to be available in any given phpMyAdmin installation. SourceForge, for instance, does not have this option in phpMyAdmin. [See phpMyAdmin Help files, related to $cfg[] variables for more.]

It's very helpful, especially when making assumptive statements like this, to:

1. Say that _your_ version/installation has feature X.
2. Say _where_ this feature might be found, so that others could use it if they have it. (Your statement that it's "built-in" is incorrect and even so, you don't tell the person to whom you are replying anything useful.)

styro’s picture

styro commented

I was a bit rushed, and didn't have enough time to investigate and write up all the possibilities. Debian has that feature on by default and that is the only place I've even looked through phpmyadmin. Please forgive me, in my infinite ignorance I hadn't even considered otherwise.

From now on, can I please run all my answers by you just to make sure they are helpful enough?

Or for future reference, would it be better all round if I just kept my mouth shut?

--
Anton
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AccidentalTechie’s picture

AccidentalTechie commented

This is the first time that I have found this problem, but I am experiencing the same 'wrack'.

This makes installation 16 for me, and I've never encountered this problem before. This happens to be the first time that I'm installing on SourceForge, which is a lock-tight environment. I think that, perhaps, Drupal uses a bit of a lazy approach (or one that makes lots of assumptions) about where this is being installed.

The fact that there are not other notices (for instance, Drupal could tell us that there is a problem with non-matching UID/GID for the web directory) is a bit annoying also.

Without having access to 'root' and being able to jiggle the permissions (something that folks who use Drupal like to recommend, even thought that's almost never possible in the vast majority of web hosting arrangements...luckily) I don't think that I'll be able to use Drupal on SourceForge. (Which is a bit ironic. ;)

Drupal documentation is very limited, when it comes to specific problems (or its disorganized enough to make it limited) so I am not sure where to go from here. I have changed permissions, recreated directories and changed settings to no avail.

:-|

wrack’s picture

wrack commented

So what is the solution to my problem..?

Don't use Drupal and use something else..? I don't really want to use a forum software. I want to use a CMS. I have tried to email my hosting provider but no joy of response with a solution.

I really like it and it has got almost all the features I need for my site. I am a programmer but not a PHP programmer and I am short on time or else I would join the Drupal Developement Team and help develop the Admin section more user friendlier than it is now.

styro’s picture

styro commented

Your Drupal installation complains about /files and /files/pictures not being writable even when those directories have 777 permissions? And that your hosting provider doesn't answer emails?

If it doesn't work with 777, then something out of the ordinary is happening on your providers server. It almost sounds as if the web server has extra security restrictions in place. There isn't much that can be done with Drupal to solve this - if the OS and/or web server won't let you write to a directory there is nothing Drupal can do about it.

I would ask your provider if they have any extra restrictions set up that would stop PHP code (or other web scripts) being able to write to disk. If they don't answer, you really should reconsider whether you want to use a host that doesn't answer support requests.

From a security conscious sysadmins perspective, I can understand the desire to stop the webserver being able to write to the disk. But that does reduce the ability of the server to run an awful lot of software. If it is a deliberate policy that they won't change, you'll need to consider either using alternative software or an alternative host.

If you don't actually need the uploading functionality, you could just ignore the 'directory not writable' warnings. Your users shouldn't see them.

Sorry I can't offer any actual useful solutions.

--
Anton
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wrack’s picture

wrack commented

No no, you are helpful. I was thinking about changing the host anyways.

Just in case anyone wants to know who is this crappy hosting provider, it's NXServe http://www.nxserve.com/

Unfortunately I need to have a facility to upload files so I can't ignore this. But I am ok to ask this again when I get my new hosting done and ready with the latest Drupal version.

Thanks all for the heads up.

Cheers :)

anupam’s picture

anupam commented

I installed drupal in the a directory called newsite. To access it the following url was used:
www.xyz.org/newsite

For some reason "files" directory inside the newsite directory (which is the default) gave me the permission problem.

To fix this, I created the files directory at the top level (i.e. at the same level as the "newsite" dir) and that worked!

I also tried creating the files dir inside the newsite dir, but the setting "newsite/files" did not work.

So now the files dir is not inside the drupal dir (newsite) but thats Ok.

Anupam.