[Pmwiki-users] File permissions/ownership problem

[Janice Heinold]

I hope somebody can help me with this...

---------------
BACKGROUND

I was attempting to upgrade an installation of pmwiki last night. I was
running v0.4.09 and wanted to upgrade to v0.4.24. I have upgraded pmwiki
before - and I have never had any problem doing it. I renamed the =
existing
pmwiki.php to pmwikiold.php and uploaded the new pmwiki.php. When I =
tried to
access the script, I was told "Forbidden- permission denied." I tried
changing permissions on pmwiki.php, wiki.d and my wiki folder. Nothing
worked.=20

Eventually, after a lengthy panic attack because much of my site depends =
on
the now-defunct wiki, I created a brand new install of pmwiki. I copied =
in
my old wiki.d directory. "Permission denied- .flock... Can't acquire
lockfile." I deleted the old wiki.d directory. I set the permissions on =
my
wiki folder to 2777 and let pmwiki recreate the wiki.d directory. Now =
pmwiki
brought up the default pmiki homepage. I copied my wiki files into =
wiki.d.
They now display correctly and I was able to bring in my other local =
files
with no problem.

---------------
THE NEW PROBLEM

Now, with my new installation, I can't edit the files. I click Edit, =
makes
my changes, and when I press Save, it tells me:

Warning: fopen("wiki.d/Main.FrontPage", "w") - Permission denied in
/home/trinity/trinityvictoria-www/wikiweb2/pmwiki.php on line 490
Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output
started at /home/trinity/trinityvictoria-www/wikiweb2/pmwiki.php:490) in
/home/trinity/ trinityvictoria-www/wikiweb2/pmwiki.php on line 287
PmWiki can't process your request
Cannot write text to Main.FrontPage (Main.FrontPage)
We are sorry for any inconvenience.

---------------
WHAT I THINK IS CAUSING THE PROBLEM

The wiki files I restored from my backup had permission 644 (-rw-r--r--) =
and
owner "janice".

To troubleshoot, I created a new wiki page with the new installation -
SandBox. It had permission 664 (-rw-rw-r--) and owner "www".

---------------
HOW I TRIED TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM

I changed permission on one of the restored files - WikiSandbox - to =
664. I
was still unable to edit it. I had to change the permission to 777 =
before I
was able to edit it (it saves the changes but still gives a permission
denied for AllRecentChanges). I concluded that the permissions must be =
set
to 777 or the owner should be reset to "www".

I have command line access to the server (but not superuser access). I
logged in and attempted to run chown. I was unsuccessful. I created a =
php
script to the effect of=20
<?php system ('/bin/chown www ./wiki.d/Main.WikiSandbox') ?>
But it was also unsuccessful.

---------------
OPTIONS I SEE AT THIS POINT

1. Set the permissions on all of my restored wiki files to 777. I assume
there is a security risk here. If I have to do this, I hope there is an
easier way than changing them one by one through either my ftp program =
or my
heb host's administrative suite.

2. Run chown somehow. I don't have superuser access and haven't had any
success doing this up to now. If anybody has any tips for me here, =
they're
welcome.

3. Contact the web host's tech support. I'm not sure if they'll run =
chown
for me. I hope to exhaust all possibilities before I make that request.

Any other options or suggestions are very welcome...=20

---------------
Janice Heinold
Multimedia Designer
Department of Publications
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
=20