brownowl

Ok, I’ve been through file permissions step by step for a working site and the one that doesn’t work. I can find no difference.

I have created a new user and a brand new WP installation for that user. I have set the permissions as usual and again checked them finding no difference. And still it can’t find the WP plugin directory in order to delete a plugin.

I found a “cure” in a post that suggested I add the following to my wp-config.php:

if(is_admin()) {
	add_filter('filesystem_method', create_function('$a', 'return "direct";' ));
	define( 'FS_CHMOD_DIR', 0751 );
}

I’ve done that, and the plugin was deleted instantly. Scarily, it didn’t ask for any FTP details, which is a bit of a concern as although it has solved this problem, I still don’t know why it happened in the first place, or what this change has opened my site up to. I’ve also installed a plugin sucessfully, again with no FTP details required.

It’s clearly a permissions issue, but I really can’t find it, so for completeness, here’s the situation with site permissions and how I set them.

The installation root is in the “USER/www” directory referred to first in the permissions script below:

/var is drwxr-xr-x root root
/var/www is drwxrwxr-x www-data www-data
/var/www/USER is drwxrwxr-x USER www-data

and in the user’s tree permissions are set as follows, where “www” is the WP installation root:

sudo cd /var/www/USER
sudo chown USER:www-data www
sudo chmod 775 www
sudo find . -exec chown USER:www-data {} +
sudo cd www
sudo find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} +
sudo find . -type d -exec chmod 775 {} +
sudo chmod 644 index.php
sudo chmod 775 wp-content
sudo chmod 775 wp-admin
sudo chmod 775 wp-includes
sudo chmod 640 wp-config.php
sudo cd wp-content
sudo chmod 644 index.php
sudo mkdir uploads
sudo mkdir upgrade
sudo mkdir languages
sudo chown www-data:www-data uploads
sudo chown USER:www-data upgrade
sudo chown -R USER:www-data languages
sudo chmod 775 plugins
sudo chmod 775 themes
sudo chmod 775 upgrade
sudo chmod 775 uploads
sudo chmod 775 languages
sudo cd languages
sudo mkdir plugins
sudo mkdir themes
sudo chown -R USER:www-data plugins
sudo chown -R USER:www-data themes
sudo chmod 775 plugins
sudo chmod 775 themes

Can anyone a) find any fault in those permissions please (apart from the duplications added during testing), and b) tell me if what I added to wp-config leaves me insecure?

I’m not a WP or PHP developer, at all… I just manage Linux servers.

Many thanks, Laurie.

Because clients use FTP to add and update their plugins, and WP core. I provide what my clients ask for, and that is FTP.

This issue is only there for one user and then only via WP. I simply can’t see what the problem is, and I’ve spent a lot of time on it. Posting here is, trust me, in desperation.

In my original post I said “I’ve checked the vsftpd config on both machines, and it’s identical.” The issue is not with FTP, nor with Ubuntu. I know that for sure, so it’s somewhere else.

Cheers, Laurie.

Thanks for the reply, but I see I should explain…

The site is transferred and works in all regards except this FTP problem.

I set up, run and manage the server it lives on, I am, therefore, the “hosting”. FTP is working perfectly for all users, including this one.

Other sites on that server aslso work perfectly, all except this one, and my issue is that I cannot see the problem, nor work out the solution, hence my asking for help. Over the years I’ve worked in IT, I’ve learnt that a fresh set of eyes/thinking can often see the issue that I no longer can.

Cheers, Laurie.

Ok, panic over. This is, as I suspected, a Gentoo problem, and it seems caused entirely by the recent upgrade to PHP 5.3.

I re-emerged PHP with the following USE flags set:

USE=”cli cgi apache2 ctype fastbuild force-cgi-redirect ftp gd hash iconv ipv6 memlimit mysql nls pcre pic posix pdo reflection session simplexml soap sockets spl ssl tokenizer truetype xml xmlreader xmlwriter xsl zlib” emerge php

and it works.

I got the above from this page, which might help someone else on Gentoo with this problem:

https://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/php/wiki/CommonQuestions

Thanks for the help. I’d tried the Gentoo forums (but not posting), and found a few clues, which led me to find the problem. Gentoo is an excellent distro, we’ve been using it for 10 years, and luckily nothing much goes wrong with it. But when it does, it can be a nightmare. Luckily, this wasn’t too big a deal in the end…

It has taken a looooong time to sort this one out!

Cheers, Laurie.

Thanks for the reply.

I can confirm that there are no active plugins, and only the default theme. I have also just upgraded to 3.0.4 by means of a totally new install from scratch.

I can also confirm that I haven’t touched any of the WP files.

Lastly, sadly, I can confirm that the error is still there.

I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s something to do with PHP, but I don’t know what… I think maybe a recent Gentoo upgrade broke something, and maybe there’s some functionality I need in PHP that isn’t compiled in by default any more…

Cheers, Laurie.

Have made some further discoveries:

1) on trying to delete files for a plug-ins or new theme, after entering the ftp details, the entire screen goes blank, and there is no source to be seen

2) on trying to add a plug-in or a theme, the left-side menu and the top of the screen remain, but the main panel is blank. The source confirms this, giving an incomplete page.

Cheers, Laurie.

I’ve continued to work on this, and have made the following discoveries:

1) it isn’t an xml issue with Gentoo use flags
2) if I view source in Firefox, the page source is there, but the display is blank.

Help still desperately required please!