Joomla! permissions woes!

Hi, I can't get Joomla to work correctly!! Keeps giving me permission errors, among others. I can't upload data or install add-ons. Has anybody here gotten Joomla 1.5 to work correctly with MyHosting?

Background:

I was recently commissioned to revamp the website at work and my boss wanted to use Joomla! It worked great! I was so thrilled, that I decided to transfer all my websites to a Joomla based system.

Unfortunately, Install,deployment and functionality have been very difficult in the MyHosting environment. The installer that is built into MyHosting worked, but it installed version 1.0 :o instead of 1.5!! I was disappointed that the newest version was not available, so I tried a manual install.

The web based install failed to launch and after much troubleshooting, found that there is no support for the .htaccess file in the MyHosting environment. deleted the .htaccess and was able to launch the installer.

Site is up and running, but I cannot install any plugins, change template from within the site, upload images, display certain icons or make user-specific customizations. Seems like the permissions on the folders are wrong, but I dont want to go folder by folder, changing to 777!! This seems silly and definitely a security risk. Some research pointed towards PHP safemode being on. Some towards hosting restrictions.

I have tried some 4 sites now, manually and automatically installed and I am always running into the same errors! I have tried it on two other hosting companies and both have been successful, quick and easy. this leads me to believe there is something weird with the setup Myhosting has...

ideas??? suggestions??? Unfortunately, If can't get this working quickly, I would prefer to migrate all my sites and domains to one of the other companies I tried and which worked great.

Thanks

Joomla control panel has an info section. This shows all folders as unwritable. Checked permissions and they are all 755 for folders.

Logged into one of the sites that works on another hosting company and control panel showed all folders as writable. Checked permissions and they are also 755.

What's the deal? why are the MyHosting folders NOT writable???

Hi

Hope this will give you the reason for some of your problems, not the solution...

Launch your Joomla -> Global Configuration page in one window..
Notice if the configuration.php is : Unwriteable or Writeable

Launch myhostings File Manager in a second window..
Check the filepermission on the configuration.php file.
My file is 664, and it is Unwriteable, only if it is set to 666 it becomes Writeable
To me this indicates that the owner of the configuration.php file, FTP, is not the same user that is running Joomla. Not even the group permissions lets them share permissions on a file. Only Public write access makes the file Writable, which is bad.

When I first started fombling around Joomla, I installed some extra /templates (needed 777 on the template directory i guess. it is 2 years ago) Joomla created some directories and some files in the /template directory. These files is owned my the user WEB, not FTP

/Kenny

Kenny,

You are Right on!

While I am not a joomla expert, testing has shown that there are only several directories that are affected.

To get around this problem for the moment you can use the MyHosting File Utility to change permissions on just that few directories. This will allow you install module and plugins. There are a few other directories that could also be changed to avoid problems later.

If you are REAL security conscience, these directories could be changed back once the add-ons are installed. I not sure that this will accomplish much good, seeing that the configuration.php is "other writable" anyways.

The BEST solution would be for MyHosting to expand the File Manager tool to allow the setting "owner" to WEB on directories that need to be written to by PHP applications. When they support this all of the directories can be changed back “other - read only”, and the ownership set to WEB.

Be very careful using the file utility to change permissions. You MUST set the “Recurse? yes/no" to NO each time before you modify the permissions on a directory, or it will modify permissions on all files in the directory tree, and you can only change them back one at a time.

To verify which directories will need to be writable for a particular add-on, you can inspect the XML file that is provided with the application. The directories I found that need write permissions opened up for the Joomla installer to work are:

administration/cache
administration/components
cache
components
langrage/en-GB
modules
plugins/content
plugins/editors-xtd
plugins/system
tmp

The additional directories that probably should also be changed are:

images
logs

These would be needed if you want the editor to be able to upload graphics, or if you want Joomla to be able to do logging.

Hope this helps

Larry