Joomla 3.4.3 - configuration.php not writable - php

Using MariaDB, Apache, PHP 5.4.x, RHEL 7
How do I allow configuration.php to be written to?
Installed Joomla several times, always ending up with the configuration.php file not writable. I proceeded, copied the config content and created a new php file, placed it where Joomla lives, opened up the permissions, changed to apache:apache, still nothing. I've referenced several articles, notably this one:
Installing Joomla 3 Error: Your configuration file or directory is not writable
I have also tried creating an empty configuration.php file and placing it in the joomla root, opening up permissions - didnt work.
My current state of installation is configuration.php file in place, but unable to remove the installation directory via the web installer (assuming because I shoehorned the config file into place and still not being writable).
I've tried several permissions setups then attempting to remove the install directory without success. Manually removing the install directory via rm -r only yields a totally inaccessible site forcing me to wipe my joomla files, databases, and install again. Thanks in advance.

The first thing I would do is check what user php runs at on your server, and compare this with ownership of your site files.
Create user.php file at the root of your domain with
<?php echo exec('whoami'); ?>
then open that file with your broser. This will give you the name of the user that php runs as on your server. It may be apache but it may not.
Compare this user with the ownership of config.php and your site installation as a whole.
If you upload a new Joomla site via SFTP and follow the standard browser instal steps, permissions shouldn't be a problem. If you are say uploading a zip file and using a terminal connection and SSH, make sure your SSH connection is the same user as the php user on your server.
Good luck!

Working with my server guy - found out that several sebool settings were keeping Apache from doing what it needed to do. Going one step further, we identified that sebool commands needed to be ran to allow httpd_can_sendmail in order to use the Sendmail feature. Hope this helps someone out there.
The command that seemed to do the trick was sudo chcon -R -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t /var/www/html

In our case, problem was with CentOS permissions. So if Joomla is installed on CentOS powered server, you need to change config file (/etc/selinux/config) to look like this:
[root#host2a ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/selinux
# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
# enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
# permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
# disabled - SELinux is fully disabled.
SELINUX=permissive
# SELINUXTYPE= type of policy in use. Possible values are:
# targeted - Only targeted network daemons are protected.
# strict - Full SELinux protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted
# SETLOCALDEFS= Check local definition changes
SETLOCALDEFS=0
Actually, you only set SELINUX to permissive.
Hope this helps.
p.s. Solution works for RedHat too.

Related

Permissions Issue on Wordpress Core Version Upgrade

I have a centOS -based virtual machine on digital ocean.
It is running NGINX HTTP sever.
I configured it to use multi domains, and set up SSL.
One of my domains runs a Wordpress application.
I migrated the WordPress files from my godaddy hosting.
Everything works great except when I try to upgrade the wordpress core ( updating and installing plugins works just fine).
When I try to upgrade WordPress to version 5.4.2 I get a permissions error (as shown in attachment photo):
Permission denied in /var/www/mydomain.com/wordpress/wp-admin/includes/class-wp-filesystem-direct.php on line 281
wordpress core upgrade file permissions error display
I tried doing the following just to diagnose the issue... I have the directory full access to nginx user:
chmod -R 777 /var/www/
chown nginx:nginx /var/www/
This did not work
I made sure php user is nginx by outputting echo exec('whoami'); on the page.
I am completely dumbfounded.
Does anyone know what the problem may be?
As a last resort I manually upgraded my wordpress version using FTP, but I'm concerned that I never figured out the root cause of this issue and it will spring back up again opening up a can of worms.
CentOS includes a mandatory access control (MAC) security mechanism in its Linux kernel by the name of SELinux. According to a support forum thread on Wordpress.org, this mechanism sometimes can cause issues that manifest with this error.
SSH into your server and use the following command to change the SELinux "context" for the entire /var/www/mydomain.com folder:
chcon -R –-type httpd_sys_rw_content_t /var/www/mydomain.com/
The last post in the above-linked thread indicated that this change of context alleviated the errors you're seeing.
As an aside, for your system's security, ensure you change your file permissions back to their defaults.

Why can't WordPress access the file system?

A client informed me that any time he tries to update a plugin, he gets an error:
To perform the requested action, WordPress needs to access your web server. Please enter your FTP credentials to proceed. If you do not remember your credentials, you should contact your web host.
I don't have FTPd setup on the server, but this seems like a basic permissions issue, right? I've never had to use FTP credentials to update any other WordPress installations.
Well, I did some reading and started messing with permissions and long story short, out of frustration, I eventually made everything writeable by everybody:
sudo chmod -R 777 src
But I'm still getting the same error. So it has to be some type of configuration issue, right?
I ran a few find . -exec grep commands to determine if there is a hard-coded document root (like in Joomla), but I came up empty handed.
Do I really have to install FTPd to be able to update WordPress from the admin interface?
Is there a config file somewhere that specifies the document root location?
Is there some other configuration option that I'm missing here?
Or maybe it's something in the database? The site was originally on a shared host but was moved to a DigitalOcean VPS a month or so ago.
I was able to force WordPress to use the filesystem instead of FTP by setting the FS_METHOD constant in wp-config.php:
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
More details can be found in the WordPress codex.
Try running chown -R apache:apache on the directory. I recall running in to an issue with ownership even when permissions were OK. You may have more success posting this on ServerFault as well.

rewrite.php not exists in elgg installation files

I am trying to install elgg version 1.12.2 according to documentation http://learn.elgg.org/en/1.x/intro/install.html
I have uploaded elgg on server, created MySql database and created data folder.
After that I open in thew latest chrome my website and process installation starts.
Immediately I have experienced warning:
I have tried to open "test" link(which points to rewrite.php page) but this page does not exists???
Here is list of all files in my root folder: http://i.imgur.com/kcQkeei.png
I have downloaded latest elgg from https://elgg.org/download.php
Mod Rewrite should be installed and enabled. If you have done this before it seems to be a permission problem.
Try running these commands:
chown apache: path_to_elgg_dir -R
chmod 644 path_to_elgg_dir -R
It might be selinux issue. You can check selinux status using sestatus -v.
In order to disable selinux follow this link.
rewrite.php does not exist indeed as it's special path that's supposed to be rewritten by mod_rewrite of equivalent (depending on type of web server you're using). If you get 404, that means you have not configured URL rewriting properly.
The link that you posted yourself contains "Troubleshooting" section. Additionally I'd recommend enabling curl in your PHP configuration to make sure that installer is able to reliably test URL rewriting (your error indicates that it's missing).
You did not mention any issues with following installation documentation? What server are you using? Did you have problems with any steps described in documentation?

What are the configurations required for Apache (HTTPD) for enabling directory/file writing and file uploading?

Hie,
I have installed a new httpd server and loaded my web application on it which is designed to upload files on the server. Also it creates new directories and files inside the web directory of the application. But i am unable to use these features because it gives me a permission denied error. I searched onto the web and got the clue that i require to enable ftp login through my PHP script. I changed the ownership and permissions but it is still not working. Can please someone explain the configuration required in simple steps to enable these features. I am using CentOs-6. It will be highly appreciated. Sorry for the miss formed question.
Configurations I tried out:
Create a Linux user and group named webuser. Give it permissions of
the directory of my web applications. Install Vsftpd and allow webuser
to login. Set webuser FTP root directory same as my Web Application
directory (i.e /var/www/mysite)
My httpd user is apache.
I was doing everything right. The only problem was CentOS SELinux. It was not allowing apache to write files into the web directory.
Using the command "setenforce 0" , i closed it down and everything started working.
Later, I added an exception into my SELinux policies to fix issues.

PHP Apache Config on linux

I'm using Apache 2 in Linux mint and I don't know where to store my files and projects. if I store it in var/www it is not accessible for me, I have to use command as super user. Are there any way to solve my problem?
- If I want to store in my home folder, what should I type in the address bar if I want to run my file?
- Are there any other good solution than these? (such as change the accessible to folder /var, or change the Root_Url of apache ...)
The easiest way to solve this provlem is by typing the following line in terminal:
sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www
and then enter your password. And now you are done. You can store all the PHP files in /var/www
You have to do a chmod, you can have more information in your terminal with comand man chmod to set the rights to write in that folder or else point the web-server elsewhere (the setting is in the https.conf file)
There is different solutions:
create a symlink from /var/www/link to your projet and set your project
create a virtualhost with the DocumentRoot to point to your project: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/examples.html
in both cases your project must have gives permissions to the apache user (www-data?) to read/execute you project
You need to active the user_dir mod of apache and then run the content from your home folder.
To run a file in your hole directory you should go to localhost/~youruser/script.php of course after enabling user_dir
Everything depends on the use.
If you are looking for a configuration for a development server that is accessible only from limited host (such as localhost):
You can configure Apache (/etc/apache2/apache2.conf) to run with your user/group.
User myuser
Group mygroup
Store all your project in your user_dir (/home/myuser/projects/...)
Create a virtual host for any of your projects
All files generated by your server will be accessible to you and vice versa
One way to accomplish this is to edit the default virtualhost supplied with Apache 2. In Linux Mint 14 its configuration file is located at:
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/
This directory should hold symlinks for all active sites, for me the default is named 000-default.
Change the lines with "DocumentRoot" and "Directory" to point wherever you like. The server should have read only privileges by default. If you are working on file manipulation then it will need permission to read and write files.
Once this is set, restart the server ("sudo service apache2 restart") and type localhost in your browser to access the directory you've set above.
For more advanced configs have a look at:
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/853
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/527

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