Reggie Thomson’s Diary

An Error Has Occurred! Unable to open config file to write!

Set file attributes for configuration.php to 666

I started from scratch again with Joomla.

This involved:

1. Remove all tables from MySQL
2. Remove all directories and files from mydomainname.com
3. (Un)Tar the Joomla .tar.gz file
4. Make configuration.php writeable
5. Upload .htaccess as before
6. Make all necessary directories and subdirectories writeable using FileZilla
7. Run through the configuration from www.mydomainname.com
8. Note: the password for Admin was changed, and the email address set to info@mydomainname.com
9. When complete, remove the installation directory and all subfiles, subdirectories as requested
10. Made configuration.php unwriteable
11. Attempted to login with “admin” and “mypassword”

Fails to login!

Go to the website www.mydomainname.com - it’s got the default information on it.
Login as admin - This works!

Click on the “Administrator” button - asks for login again. Fails to login!

Solved problem: Incorrect settings on the sessions directory.

When you start collecting litter, you begin to pick up a lot more garbage.

The local yobs have noticed the garden where the litter-picker retreats.

So, this morning a discarded polystyrene take-away was found in the garden.

It will only get worse. These are the dregs of society. Their hatred and evil is immutable. They will stop at nothing to retain their freedom to do what they want, whenever they want.

A client has reported problems with hyperlinks. They appear as just text. Also, the “Write Post” no longer has the icons at the top of the textbox, and the post appears in HTML format, with all the HTML code visible.
Comparing his settings with another blog, I notice that on the “Admin menu” -> “Options” -> “Writing” he has

☑ “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically”

Unchecking the above box does not appear to correct the problem.

From WordPress support, I try this, but without effect.

From WordPress support, the ☑ “Use the visual rich editor when writing” is already enabled on my profile.

Checking the database on another WordPress account, I find “advanced_edit” -> “0″ and “rich_editing” -> “true” in the “wp_options” table. These are the same on the faulty account. - no quick database fix.

So far, this has taken an hour of debugging.

I have also checked that the effect is the same in IE7 and FireFox.

Plesk has changed the /var/lib/psa/dumps/ directory structure.

Now each user has a numbered directory, whereas before, the backups were stored in a directory for each domain name e.g. mydomainname.com
So, I removed the old directories by hand

rm -rf mydomainname.com

Installation notes:

Using Plesk 8.0.0 (updated from 7.5.4)

1. Used Plesk SSH to upload the Joomla.1.0.8.tar.gz file.

2. Plesk SSH: “tar -zxvf Joomla.1.0.8.tar.gz”

3. Access domain - gives Joomla installation check page.
Problems:

1. configuration.php Unwriteable
Uploaded a blank file and put file permissions to 666

2. Session save path /var/lib/php/session, Unwriteable

a) Tried Putty SSH to server; “su -”; “cd /var/lib/php/”; “ls -al”; “chmod 666 session”;

Fails. Probably because owner is “apache apache”

b) Tried creating “/var/www/vhosts/mydomainname.com/conf/vhost.conf” with contents:

php_value session.save_path “/var/www/vhosts/mydomainname.com/httpdocs/php_sessions”

Fails.

c) Created “.htaccess” file in “httpdocs” with contents:

php_value session.save_path “/var/www/vhosts/mydomainname.com/httpdocs/php_sessions”

Set file permissions of “php_sessions” to 766

See Joomla forums.

Works.

2. Display Errors - Off and Magic Quotes GPC - Off

Added two more lines to .htaccess:

php_value magic_quotes_gpc “1″
php_value display_errors “1″

Works.

3. Safemode off

This was sorted out in Plesk -> mydomainname.com -> setup -> services

4. Directory and file permissions unwriteable

Used Filezilla to change all.

This worked for the top directories, but the sub-directories remained unwriteable if I tried to change the file attributes simultaneously. I haven’t found a solution to this yet.

Technically, you lose Godaddy support. They only support the version they install for you. If the server has to be reinstated, it will be back to 7.5.4.
Also, the remote ftp backup breaks. You cannot automatically save backups to a remote ftp. However, in Plesk 7.5.4, the website was unavailable during backups. For small websites with low traffic, this is not a problem. For reggie.net, however, it used to take up to 15 minutes to do the backup - which was unacceptable.

I now do automatic backups locally (which don’t appear to take the website offline). Then I manually transfer backups to my remote ftp. Downloading to a home computer is also possible, but the file size seems to balloon (60Mbytes becomes 130Mbytes - maybe it is in zip format not bz2 or gzip).

There is also an Acronis TrueImage server, but it seems to just give an error. This would be useful. I assume Swsoft are working on an update to this.

I was not aware of these issues before pressing the “Update” button, but none of them are major problems. For security reasons, I prefer to keep up-to-date.

The dedicated server with Fedora 2 core uses MySQL version 3.23.58 (with Plesk 7.5 reloaded, which can be upgraded at no cost to 8.0, using the Update option in the Plesk control panel).

MediaWiki requires MySQL 4.0.14 minimum.

If you wish to use the Godaddy dedicated server for a MediaWiki, you will need the RedHat Enterprise 4 option ($24.99 per month extra).

Alternatively, you could risk upgrading MySQL outside the Plesk interface - see this article. P.S. I’ve just found this article on devnetwork.net on upgrading PHP/MySQL. I’ll write a post to see if anyone has tried the Godaddy upgrade route.
Personally, I will wait until Plesk issue an upgrade that includes MySQL 4. P.S. See above.

I just discovered that reggie.net might be worth $58,214! See LeapFish.com.

However, my diary is worth precisely $0.00! At least, according to this website.

The photography blog is doing slightly better at $564.54.