ImageMagick reported an error: convert: unable to open image `files/images/snacks n drinks_0.thumbnail.jpg': Permission denied.

Is your files/images directory read/writable to all? you should run this command: chmod -R 777 images when you are in the files directory.

Topologic, you have to do no such thing, and setting your permissions that way could be a big fat security hole under certain configurations. What you should do is ensure that the user that the web server runs under (on my Debian machine Apache runs under 'www-data', other systems use 'httpd', 'apache', etc) has read/write permissions on all files in the 'files' directory and read/write/execute permissions on the 'files' directory and all its subdirectories.

I'm pretty sure this is a bug in the module. I ran into this tonight, and wrote a little patch which fixes it on my server by using absolute paths when invoking the 'convert' binary.

I'm using ImageMagick 6.3.7 on Debian Lenny.

I don't use image magick so not in a position to test this patch.

Setting to needs review so others can test.

@davideads

Yeah, I violated one of the cardinal rules of permissioning. I run under a jailed shell in my shared web space, so I don't worry about it, but it is something that one shouldn't do.

In any event, your patch was applied correctly and I'm currently playing around with it to see if it fully works.

System specs:
Centos 5.4
ImageMagick 6.2.8 04/17/08

Since I am a moderate point release behind, I'm not sure if this poses any problems.

Thanks,
Chris