[Plugin: EWWW Image Optimizer] something goes wrong here…

what is the output of these commands:
which optipng
which /usr/local/bin/optipng

It is possible that the ‘which’ command is not functioning properly, in which case, it is necessary to check the box on the settings page to disable the utility checks. It looks like you certainly have them installed correctly on the system, so it should not be necessary to enter any paths on the settings page.
You can verify that things are working by running a couple images through the re-optimize on the Media Library page after you check that ‘skip utility’ box on the settings page.

Hello ! wow you are a good guy ?? quick very quick response.

here is the output:

[root@ns1 /]# which optipng
/usr/local/bin/optipng

[[root@ns1 /]# which /usr/local/bin/optipng
/usr/local/bin/optipng

Looks like it is the same one they use ??

Okay did as you asked, do paths in the settings and disable the check, did some images re-optimize and no savings it says. I tried all the modules on a ssh session (as user root) and they work fine, mostly –help or /? gives output for all 3.

well, the next response may not be so speedy, gotta go pull some weeds…
At any rate, perhaps the web-server user does not have permissions to see those files and that is causing the issues. You can use top generally to look and see what use is running the apache process. You should be looking for something like ‘httpd’ or ‘apache2’.

Then run this:
ls -l /usr/local/bin/optipng

That will tell us the permissions set on the optipng binary file.

If it doesn’t have x in all 3 ‘sections’ that could be the issue. Binaries need to be executable by all. That can be fixed by running this command:
chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/optipng

Do that for all the binaries, and see what happens. You should be able to uncheck that ‘skip utilities check’ checkbox on the settings page at this point.

here is the output

[root@ns1 /]# ls -l /usr/local/bin/optipng
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 210056 Jul 7 17:13 /usr/local/bin/optipng

hums what about the owner of the files? Can apache access them even it says root root ?

[root@ns1 /]# ls -l /usr/local/bin/gifsicle
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 419208 Jul 7 17:15 /usr/local/bin/gifsicle

[root@ns1 /]# ls -l /usr/bin/jpegtran
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22280 Jan 6 2007 /usr/bin/jpegtran
[root@ns1 /]#

so optipng should work when I try pure a .png file?

Same thing, as soon as I enter the paths or without the paths and leave the box unchecked it does not work.

media library says: Unsupported file type
optipng is missing

do you like to see what happens with a team viewer session on my machine?

[root@ns1 /]#
[root@ns1 /]# chmod 755 /usr/bin/jpegtran
[root@ns1 /]# chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/gifsicle
[root@ns1 /]# chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/optipng
[root@ns1 /]# ls -l /usr/bin/jpegtran
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22280 Jul 7 18:53 /usr/bin/jpegtran
[root@ns1 /]# ls -l /usr/local/bin/optipng
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 210056 Jul 7 17:13 /usr/local/bin/optipng
[root@ns1 /]# ls -l /usr/local/bin/gifsicle
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 419208 Jul 7 17:15 /usr/local/bin/gifsicle
[root@ns1 /]#

checked again, they are all chmod 755 now.

Just to make sure, did a find on all 3 modules

[root@ns1 /]# find -name jpegtran
./usr/bin/jpegtran

[root@ns1 /]# find -name optipng
./usr/local/bin/optipng
./var/www/vhosts/plcs.eu/httpdocs/optipng-0.7.1/src/optipng
./var/www/vhosts/plcs.eu/httpdocs/optipng-0.7.1/src/optipng/optipng

[root@ns1 /]# find -name gifsicle
./usr/local/bin/gifsicle
./var/www/vhosts/plcs.eu/httpdocs/gifsicle-1.67/src/gifsicle
[root@ns1 /]#

do these also need to be chmod 755 ?

top – 19:05:42 up 64 days, 9:23, 1 user, load average: 0.32, 0.48, 0.52
Tasks: 76 total, 2 running, 74 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 18.1%us, 1.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 80.6%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 8154972k total, 7074780k used, 1080192k free, 527444k buffers
Swap: 4192944k total, 176k used, 4192768k free, 4089852k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
21644 apache 15 0 685m 87m 6792 R 17.3 1.1 0:09.28 httpd
21714 apache 15 0 648m 58m 5452 S 16.0 0.7 0:06.34 httpd

here is the output on the top process.

The permissions looked fine originally, but they should for sure work now for everyone. Just by way of explanation, and using your output for jpegtran as an example:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22280 Jul 7 18:53 /usr/bin/jpegtran
The first – is the directory character, which should be a – unless you’re looking at a folder. The next 3 are the permissions for the owner, the second group of 3 is permissions for the group, and the third group is for everyone else. r = read, w = write, x = execute

so here’s the next thing I would try:

use the switch user command to change to the ‘apache’ user, which is the one running the webserver:
su apache

Then try running this like you did originally:
optipng -v

You can type ‘exit’ or press Ctrl-D to end the apache shell and go back to root.

I am not allowed to su to apache…

[root@ns1 /]# su apache
This account is currently not available.

[root@ns1 /]# su – apache
This account is currently not available.

However if I su to another user (my co-worker for example)

[root@ns1 /]# su remco
[remco@ns1 /]$ optipng -v
OptiPNG version 0.7.1
Copyright (C) 2001-2012 Cosmin Truta and the Contributing Authors.

This program is open-source software. See LICENSE for more details.

Portions of this software are based in part on the work of:
Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler (zlib)
Glenn Randers-Pehrson and the PNG Development Group (libpng)
Miyasaka Masaru (BMP support)
David Koblas (GIF support)

Using libpng version 1.4.9 and zlib version 1.2.6-optipng
[remco@ns1 /]$

I was afraid of that, that user account is likely not allowed to have shell access, which makes me wonder if that is why it can’t execute the other commands. I would ask your webhost for more information about that. I’m not sure what else to do to troubleshoot this issue. If you find anything out, please post it back here for others to see.

I made a call at their support desk. Keep you updated. thanks so far for your excellent support!

One last thing that might help would be to set this line in wp-config.php:
define('WP_DEBUG', true);

Make sure to turn it back off later.

Another ‘last thing’… Make sure PHP’s safe mode is not turned on. I’m including a check in 1.0.8 for this, due out shortly.