What on earth is this "SetHandler Drupal_Security_Do_Not_Remove_See_SA_2006_006"?

Hi

My host www.strato.de always gets very good reviews in German internet & PC magazine reviews for reasons I dont quite understand. Their support sucks. A new problem that cropped up from no where on Sunday produces such ugly errors on all pages:

# warning: realpath() [function.realpath]: SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is 1421916 is not allowed to access /tmp owned by uid 0 in /mnt/web3/50/59/52222059/htdocs/includes/file.inc on line 190.
# warning: realpath() [function.realpath]: SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is 1421916 is not allowed to access /tmp owned by uid 0 in /mnt/web3/50/59/52222059/htdocs/includes/file.inc on line 190.
# warning: realpath() [function.realpath]: SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is 1421916 is not allowed to access /tmp owned by uid 0 in /mnt/web3/50/59/52222059/htdocs/includes/file.inc on line 190.

Apart from this, pictures in the image gallery (again) stopped showing & many links, including on some admin & settings pages stopped being active. I wrote them on Sunday & up to now Wednesday evening no response yet.

After doing some research here in the forum, I discovered such errors are caused when the HOST, since only they have access to this turn "safe_mode" => "On". Drupal requires this to be "Off".

I checked this out using a phpinfo() script & found that was the case. It seemed someone there turned it on sometime on Sunday.
I crosschecked this by downloading a backup of the site & installing it on a Xampp Web server on my PC. Every thing functions perfectly like the site was a day before.

The main problem with Strato.de is their support. Please keep away from this host if you want your Drupal site to run smoothly & especially if you have a production site. Apart from Email, the only way to contact them is using an expensive telephone number. They earn something from the charges.

Back to your problem Buzzard:
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After wrestling with these guys for about 2 weeks, one of them bothered to look at the error log & as it is noted there the problem is cased by some function called "SetHandler" being disabled on their servers. In all these years with Drupal & lots of hosts, I have never encountered any other that has this done this for security or other reasons. The gentleman suggested that if one uncommented the first line in the .htaccess file in \sites\default\files the errors stop showing.

SetHandler Drupal_Security_Do_Not_Remove_See_SA_2006_006
Options None
Options +FollowSymLinks

instead of

#SetHandler Drupal_Security_Do_Not_Remove_See_SA_2006_006
Options None
Options +FollowSymLinks

Not only that, but the pictures in the galleries can not only be uploaded but are visible, which was not the case before.

When I pointed to possible security implications as suggested in that line & in a related article I found somewhere here at Drupal.org (not the forum) in some reference to the subject, he correctly suggested in that article, it is stated it affects versions 4.x of Drupal, whereas we now have 6.x.
I had no choice but to uncomment this, because my client wanted the site running at any cost especially after waiting for about 2 weeks to get a solution from my host & with reasons she could not relate to.

Unless there is an authoritative statement from Drupal.org on the importance of that piece of code for versions above 4.x, one cannot know the real implications of this. It would also be good if they uncommented that line if it only affected older versions of Drupal.
------------------------

My advice once again: keep away from www.strato.de if you want to use Drupal, in spite of them insisting in the features section it's optimized for Joomla & Drupal, because of

• at least one significant existing Drupal un-friendly server setting, the "SetHandler" function being blocked making it impossible to use Drupals system to upload & view pictures, etc. If you dont know why pictures cannot be uploaded you are in for a lot of headache before you discover the solution. You are likely to get responses include stuff like: "ask a web designer to help you ,...."
• other erratic moves like this turning on of "safe_mode" killing some essential functions in Drupal & filling the page with ugly error messages
• some impossibly sluggish support who often deny existence of problems they don't understand & try to show you are the one at fault, after they respond to your email at least 3 days after you write or respond to some of their unhelpful responses, before waiting another 2, 3 days. If you are lucky they respond earlier, but it takes having luck to get someone understanding your problem - at least the Drupal-related.
  The first time it took about 11 days & countless email exchanges, chats (chat is often inactivated) & some telephone call. This time the fourth full day is approaching ....

Regards