Installation Step 5: FTP setup --- error HELP!!!

[buzybonnie]

I am getting an "The FTP settings are not valid or your FTP server is not compatible with Joomla!; could not connect with server."

I have triple, quadruple and ten times over checked username and password and tried just about everything under the sun configuration wise for the root folder.  It won't "auto search" for it either.

I know I can ftp because i was using cute ftp just before that. I even made sure it wasn't happening cause I was still logged into cuteftp.

Could I actually have a server that is not FTP compatible??  I am using host "Crystaltech.com".  It is not an apache server but I was able to install Joomla 1.12 on it for one of my other sites.  I had to tweak something when I did it. Could this be the issue?

The Advanced tab info is already filled in with IP and a port number.  Does the port number matter or can I override that to something else that might make a difference?

Help!

Bonnie

[redx]

Hi,

Is the port number 21?


regards

Redx

[buzybonnie]

Yes the port was at 21.  I saw someone elses post that had 14141 and tried that. Didn't seem to make a difference.  I did do a google search to try to learn about port #s and I couldn't find anything that gave me any rhyme or reason to use one or another and the knowledgebase of my web host didn't yield anything either. 

Are there some other #'s you'd recommend ? Or is there a place to go to learn what to use.  This is probably totally unrelated but I do use different outgoing mail server settings than "default" because of Cox communications, my ISP, blocks the mail otherwise.  I doubt it has anything to do with this but I'll throw it out there

Bonnie

[baxteryang]

Have you found a solution?  I am having the same problem.

[BradGroux]

I'm getting the same error when I try to setup the FTP in step 5 as well, which I believe is causing my installation to fail with the model.php error on line 782 as seen in the following post.

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg970635

When setting up my FTP i've tried using 127.0.0.1, ftp.mysite.com, ftp://myserver.myhostingcompany.com as well as the actual IP address of my FTP server and nada... still can't connect.

[panayk]

I am having the same problem but started a new thread before I saw this, so I'll copy it here:

I installed Joomla 1.5 on my Ubuntu machine and it seems to work fine except for one problem:
At some point in the installation it asked me to create an ftp account for Joomla with (full I assume) access to the Joomla website directory.

I use proftpd so my ftp users are really system users.

I created user 'joomla' with group 'joomla' and home '/srv/www/joomla', which is the location of the joomla site.

I added 'www-data' (apache user) to the group 'joomla' and made 'joomla:joomla' owner of '/srv/www/joomla' with 'read-write' permissions for user and 'read' permissions for group.

My machine is NATed and proftpd listens on a 'mysite.dyndns.com' alias which translates to my router's (dynamic) IP outside my LAN, and to my machine's local IP inside the LAN.
So I can access '/srv/www/joomla' with gFTP from my machine if I connect to 'mysite.dyndns.com' but not if I connect to 'localhost'.

So I tried to configure Joomla with:

FTP Host = mysite.dyndns.com
FTP Port = 21
FTP Username = joomla
FTP Password = ******
FTP Root = /

But when I hit "Verify ftp settings", I got an error saying something like "Joomla cannot access the root directory. Your FTP server may be incompatible with Joomla."

As I said, using the exact same settings, I can access the site directory with gFTP from the same machine.

Eventually I gave up and made 'www-data' owner of the site dir, which is not a big security issue (I think), because there are no other sites on my machine (except a subversion repository).

Still, I wonder if someone more knowledgeable than me can help me solve this.

[jasonmartin]

I am having the same issue with 1.5.  Although I have received different resulting errors with different data entered.

Here is a snapshot of the setting page:




If I leave the directory blank, I get:




If I ask it to find the directory I get:



If I put in /public_html/ I get:



I know that my server's ftp protocol, and users are set correctly, but I am at a loss on this one...

[BradGroux]

Glad to see we have like 12 of us having the issue... now, if we could just find someone with a resolution that would be great.

[BradGroux]

my copied response from another thread...

I downloaded the latest nightly RC build and am still having the same problem and getting the same errors except now it says the error is happening on line 787 of models.php instead of models 782... which is the following line of the FTP write buffer area:

Code: Select all

775 // Use FTP write buffer to file
776 if (!$ftp->write($file, $buffer)) {
777 $this->setData('buffer', $buffer);
778 return false;
779 }
780
781 $ftp->quit();
782
783 }
784 else
785 {
786 if ($canWrite) {
787 file_put_contents($path, $buffer);

Here's a screenshot of the error:


It kicks me back to the installation/index.php if I try to go to the root index.php... which is the same thing it did before I downloaded the latest RC. Would be awesome to get a response on this even if it's a "hey, we have no idea why the FTP setup doesn't work!"

[BradGroux]

I've managed to finally get the "The FTP settings are valid" message on step 5 of the setup and the installation still fails with the error in line 787 of model.php.

[jasonmartin]

Well, I finally fixed my problem with this one. 

My issue was that I was trying to point the FTP server to a symbolicly linked directory.  A Hard linked may have worked, but I was able to get the directory to work when I installed 1.5 into one of my user directories instead of the virtual host that was linked.  I will try a hard linked directory in a few minutes and post if that has worked.

I wonder if that is the issue that some of you are having.  I know on my parents old server the company that set them up set them up with a linked directory instead of pointing their site to their directory itself.

Jason

~~~~~~~~~~~

I tried to make a hard link to my /var/www/website name folder with no luck.  I then tried makeing a symbolic link with -n(o-deference).  The link was made, but joomla still could not see the directory.  It looks like joomla has to have the physical directory accessible to the FTP user that is used.  Below is the screenie of my finally good FTP config:



Hope this helps!

[bassi]

I can't get past this step either.  Anyone able to do it?

Bassi

[baxteryang]

I am still stuck here.

jasonmartin, since you got yours working can you help explain to me what you were talking about when you were referring to symbolicly linked directory?  I really don't know what that means at all as I'm a noob at this.  I have my site hosted with 1and1.  I've created a new ftp user with rights specifically for the directory that I am using for this install.  I can ftp all my files to that directory but I am not having luck with this step of the set up.

if i skip this step and just click next, everything seems to be okay and I even get to the installation completed screen.  then i delete my installation directory and try to get to my site but I run into a fatal error. 

help.

[jasonmartin]

baxteryang, sure...

First off, if there is something that I have stated that is not correct, please correct me as I too am a neophyte to internet servers, and how joomla works with them.

I have a Linux server running the Ubuntu distribution so this will not apply to Windows servers.

Before I continue, there are a few *nix's out there, the most notable are of course Linux, Unix, and for those who use Silicon Graphics systems, Irix.

Also, I use the commandline only when working on my server as I am never home so there will not be a graphical explination on this as I don't use it and therefore can't remember it off the top of my head...

On these *nix boxes, when you create a directory, there are three ways to do this.

The first way, and most used is to use the command mkdir.  This is the same thing as creating a folder in windows, just done using the command prompt on the *nix's. 

The next two ways are similar.  Both of them are similar to Windows "shortcut" directories.  this is done using the command ln.  To create a symbolic link, almost exactly like Windows "Shortcuts", you would use ln -s "directory to link" "directory to place link in". So if I wanted to link my typo website's directory to a users home directory I would type:

ln -s /var/www/typo.thumbprintpro.com /home/joomla/public_html

This means that the directory /var/www/typo.thumbprintpro.com and /home/joomla/public_html both lead to the same place, the typo.thumbprintpro.com directory.  There is a way to also make the linked directory "appear" to be the original directory, or atleast act the same.  That is to use the additional switch -n . this is a switch to tell ln to make there be no defference between the linked directory and the original one.

There is also the method of creating a hard link to the original directory which is better than the symbolic, but most Linux distributions don't allow this.  I didn't think I would be able to use the hard link, but had to try anys...

Now, I am in a unique position as I own the server that I am running joomla on and therefore I have more rights than most people out there so I am not sure just how well this will work with another hosting site. But, I think that as long as you have installed joomla onto a server where you have ftp rights, then you should be able to get the ftp working.  If your hosting provider does not offer ftp rights, then you won't be able to get ftp working on the hosted site. 

I also don't know if it is really necessary to use anything other than localhost now that I have messed around with this issue for a while.  I know I will contradict a post I made, and I will go back and correct that one, but since joomla is installed on the server that you are ftp-ing into, you only need to use localhost as the ftp server.  Otherwise the ftp protocol coded into joomla will then try to make a connection through the internet to the server it is calling the ftp from. 

An issue that you might run across is if the servers ftp settings will allow local users to access their ftp protocol or not.  By this I mean when you use localhost as your ftp server, if the web-hosting server does not allow local users to access their ftp server, then you won't be able to use this method to connect.  By creating a new user, I am not sure that the web hosting service will allow that created user have access the same way that a local user would.

As for suggestions to get another site to work, use localhost as the ftp server, and use your existing ftp credentials.  Also, make sure that the directory that you have installed joomla into is a physical folder within your public html directory.  This could be /public_html , or /httdocs , but it is where your html files are located.


Wow, this has been a long winded post, and thanks for reading it if you do.  I hope that this can help someone get their install to work properly.

Jason

[akrick]

Thanks jasonmartin,

I just tried the setup the way you showed here and it worked. I had the loopback ip in at first and it did not work but after I changed it to localhost it worked just fine.

Well, I finally fixed my problem with this one. 

My issue was that I was trying to point the FTP server to a symbolicly linked directory.  A Hard linked may have worked, but I was able to get the directory to work when I installed 1.5 into one of my user directories instead of the virtual host that was linked.  I will try a hard linked directory in a few minutes and post if that has worked.

I wonder if that is the issue that some of you are having.  I know on my parents old server the company that set them up set them up with a linked directory instead of pointing their site to their directory itself.

Jason

~~~~~~~~~~~

I tried to make a hard link to my /var/www/website name folder with no luck.  I then tried makeing a symbolic link with -n(o-deference).  The link was made, but joomla still could not see the directory.  It looks like joomla has to have the physical directory accessible to the FTP user that is used.  Below is the screenie of my finally good FTP config:



Hope this helps!

[BradGroux]

Once I got my FTP working, the work around in the post creating/editing your own configuration.php worked like a champ...

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg973400

For those of you having trouble with FTP, I imagine you are on shared server hosting or at least paying for hosting online? using ftp.mydomain.com as the host fixed my issues, I had been trying to use localhost and the IP address. Just another thing to try if you haven't already.

[panayk]

Mine was a little strange.

I had to remove the line "DefaultRoot ~" (which jails users to their homes) from my ftp configuration file.

Thanks to Jason, from whose post I got the idea.

[jasonmartin]

akrick, cool!  Glad that it helped.  I had my doubts for a while since I wrote that while half asleep this morning... er yesterday morning.

panayk, ahh..  it just clicked as to what your issuewould have been.  Yeah that would have caused you to have a headache.  My work around was to point my virtual host file for apache2 to the user joomla's public_html folder.  Now I have everything for my joomla site within joomla's home directory and I don't have to remove my jailer's key yet

Anys, glad that my post helped you get your issue solved.

Jason

[panayk]

Things work for me now but...
Has anyone else on a *nix box noticed that Joomla doesn't upload files that contain spaces?
"test.jpg" uploads successfully, but "t est.jpg" does not. I get the "[Upload] completed" message, but according to my ftp server's logs Joomla hasn't even logged in.
I should probably start a new thread...

Panayiotis

[jasonmartin]

Hey buzybonnie,

Have you had any more luck in getting FTP to work?  Haven't heard from you for a little bit, and would love to know if you get FTP to work!

panayk, yeah the new post might be a good idea.  I am getting ready to look into it now since I am up waiting for my youngest to goto sleep before I goto the wonderful slumber land myself...   give me three shakes of the peach tree...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I just tried to upload a few images over to the server.  They were:

all.gif

Lee Big Bird.jpg

Here is the tail end of the ftp log file after both files were "uploaded" :

Sat Sep  1 22:45:05 2007 [pid 17362] [joomla] OK LOGIN: Client "127.0.0.1"
Sat Sep  1 22:45:05 2007 [pid 17364] [joomla] OK UPLOAD: Client "127.0.0.1", "/public_html/images/all.gif", 10588 bytes, 594.55Kbyte/sec
Sat Sep  1 22:45:05 2007 [pid 17364] [joomla] OK CHMOD: Client "127.0.0.1", "/public_html/images/all.gif 777"

The gif transfered, but the jpg did not... {Edit:  Took out my idiot statement.....}

Jason

[markross]

I am having similar problems to those described above.  I have my own dedicated server, managed by Plesk with a number of websites on virtual hosts.  My website is at /var/www/vhosts/website.com and joomla is installed in /var/www/vhosts/website.com/httpdocs

Entering various combinations in the FTP configuration I get a variety of messages, eg: 

"The specified directory is not the directory of this Joomla installations", 

and

"The FTP settings are not valid or your FTP server is not compatible with Joomla: The fuction "RETR" failed"

Jasonmartin I get a feeling you may have the answer but I don't really understand what you did to fix it.  I understand the difference between normal, and symbolic linked directories, but I'm not sure what you actually changed, and I don't even think my home directory is symbolically linked.  I tried removing the "DefaultRoot ~"  in my FTP configuration file and that didn't work either.

Has anyone got any other suggestions as this is very frustrating! Also how essential is having the FTP layer enabled in 1.5?

Thanks

Mark

[jasonmartin]

Hey Mark,

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Edit:

I forgot about the second question which should be answered first...

About is FTP essential in 1.5? 

It is very essential from a security viewpoint.  By giving you the ability to ftp from the web site directly to the server, you don't have to set all of the directory permissions that you had to set in 1.0.XX to allow www-data to write to those directories etc.  This allows you to have your site more secured.

On with the first answer! =)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's exactly what I did to fix my issue:

I created the user joomla and gave it a password.  Then inside of joomla's home directory I created the directory of public_html.

Then inside of Apache2's site available listing for my web site, typo.thumbprintpro.com I have the following settings:

Code: Select all

#
#  Example.net (/etc/apache2/sites-available/www.example.net)
#
<VirtualHost *>
        ServerAdmin [email protected]
        ServerName  typo.thumbprintpro.com
#        ServerAlias example.net

        # Indexes + Directory Root.
        DirectoryIndex index.html index.shtml index.php
        DocumentRoot /home/joomla/public_html  
	#/var/www/typo.thumbprintpro.com

        # CGI Directory
        ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
        <Location /cgi-bin>
                Options +ExecCGI
        </Location>
AddHandler php5-script php 

        # Logfiles
#        ErrorLog  /tmp/logs/error.log
#        CustomLog /tmp/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

As you can see, I also had my directory set as /var/www/typo.thumbprintpro.com.  This gave me all sorts of trouble until I changed it over to /home/joomla/public_html.  BUT, I know why this was such an issue and that is because I have my users jailed to their home directories...

Now, I am not going into detail on restarting apache when I have made changes etc, if you need that level of detail you can pm me and I will give you more detail than this, but that is my set-up as it is currently working.

I hope that this gives a little more insight to how I got it to work.  Again, I am still a neophyte to all of this and if someone has a better method I am all for it! =)

Jason

[Tequila]

I have exact the same problem with FTP setup.

PHP Built on:  HP-UX apsu0001 B.11.11 U 9000/800 
Database Version:  3.23.53-log 
Database Collation:  N/A (mySQL < 4.1.2) 
PHP Version:  4.4.7 
Web Server:  Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) Resin/2.1.4 PHP/4.4.7 
Web Server to PHP interface:  apache 
Joomla! Version:  Joomla! 1.5.0 Production/Stable [ Endeleo ] 1-September-2007 15:00 GMT 
FTP Server: HP-UX apsu0001 FTP server (Version 1.1.214.4(PHNE_36129) Mon Apr 23 13:44:14 GMT 2007)
Configure Command  './configure' '--enable-ftp' '--enable-force-cgi-redirect' '--prefix=/opt/php' '--exec-prefix=/opt/php' '--enable-calendar' '--enable-magic-quotes' '--enable-mbstring' '--enable-bcmath' '--enable-discard-path' '--with-apache=../apache_1.3.37' '--with-zlib-dir' '--with-jpeg-dir' '--with-gd' '--with-png-dir' '--with-mysql' 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated

Jorge

[Tequila]

I finally got my FTP working.

What I did

1. At the beginning I installed Joomla! 1.5.0 Production/Stable [ Endeleo ].
2. I got this error when I tried to setup the FTP in step 5 (tried different combinations with no luck).
3. Anyway I continued with the installation without configuring FTP at that moment.
4. After the installation was completed, I went to Joomla's Global Configuration panel and enabled FTP in server tab.
5. The owner of configuration.php file changed and I wasn't able to do any more changes to Global Configuration.
6. I then asked my ISP to reset the owner of configuration.php (to be owned by my ftp user once again).
7. I disabled FTP in configuration.php manually.
8. Downloaded and installed the latest nightly RC build (8820) to solve another problem.
9. Then uploaded a JPG file using media manager to check for owner effect.
10. Noticed that image owner was not my ftp user but a server owner.
11. I then installed a Joomla 1.5 Plugin.
12. Noticed that plugin owner was not my ftp user either.
13. I enabled FTP in configuration.php manually using exact the same parameters as in my CuteFTP client and a single / in FTP root field.
14. Then installed a Joomla component for testing purposes.
15. Everything worked fine and the owner of this new component directories and files was finally my own ftp user.
16. Made some changes to configuration.php using Global Configuration panel and the owner remained the same (i.e. my ftp user).

What I learnt

1. You need to read posts and documentation to solve your problems.
2. You may pass step 5 ftp config without fully testing and configuring ftp service and you will be able to install extensions but the owner problem will remain as long as FTP is not enabled.
3. In my case, a simple / in FTP root field was enough and an initial manual configuration was necessary to avoid ownership problems.
4. I didn't have to use localhost but exactly the same FTP settings I use in CuteFTP.
5. At the beginning I thought my FTP service was not Joomla compatible but all I needed was a manual configuration.

Good luck everybody!

Jorge

[jhaneyzz]

OK,

I am following this alright but still having problems.

I have a dedicated server at a hosting company that, thus far, I have only administered via FTP, Plesk and Virtuozzo.

Now, it seems that I finally need to long into the shell or root access via FTP and edit some configurations.

Only, I have no idea what I am doing there. I have poked around on the internet, but it hasn't gotten me anywhere.

My server seems to be running RedHat Linux. Can anyone point me to a resource to learn enough to edit the FTP configuration settings enough to allow local FTP to be properly set up for Joomla 1.5 to do it's FTP thing and install components properly?

James

[mogal]

I'm still stuck on this step .... sigh...I'm on 1and1 hosting server - and have tried the 'main' user name and password; the username/password I set up for this particular domain .. and every other possible combination  all to no avail ... can I bypass this step and still upload later (or change to correct settings when I know them?) or am I stuck until I get this fixed?

Pam

[AmyStephen]

I'm still stuck on this step .... sigh...I'm on 1and1 hosting server - and have tried the 'main' user name and password; the username/password I set up for this particular domain .. and every other possible combination  all to no avail ... can I bypass this step and still upload later (or change to correct settings when I know them?) or am I stuck until I get this fixed?

Pam

Pam - you might want to read through this thread - in particular, read Tequila's post. There are answers here that will help you.

Amy

[utssace]

I am having trouble with step 5 as well.

I am not ready to just bypass it yet.  I am sure there is a way to get it right.  I have tried many combinations.  I can
get the "Autofind Path" to work, it returns "/".  However, it fails validation.

I am using my server's "Direct Admin" to set up an FTP user to my Joomla path only.  I used the "custom" path option
to point the ftp user to joomla folder only.  I tested with my ftp client and the new user works correctly.  However,
Joomla still doesn't like it.

Would it be better to manually set up the configuration.php file before running the browser installation?

Or, could it be that certain folder permissions need to be set to 777 in order for the validation to work during
installation?

[AmyStephen]

Utssace -

Please read through Tequila's well documented approach - see if you can follow the testing described and if you are ultimately able to get it to work. The trouble with providing something of this nature is that every webhost is different. So, you are going to need to figure out how to get your FTP to work with Joomla!. I think Tequila has done a good job of describing a process to help you get there. Walk through those steps and see if it helps..

You can get it to work - it just might be a bit of effort.
Amy

[utssace]

I think there is a problem with this function that needs to be looked at.

Not just for me, but for others that I know have experienced this same trend.

Joomla does not seem to accept additional FTP users set up on the server.  For example,
I set up an ftp user with permissions only to the joomla path.

However, it does accept your servers "root" ftp account.  In other words, your server's admin
ftp.  This in my opinion is not good unless you are using your server exclusively for Joomla.

The only other thing I can think of is whether permissions need to be set for the ftp user so
that Joomla will respond.  I don't know if I totally understand what I just said, but I seem to remember in
Direct Admin something about granting user permissions....

Hopefully, this will continue to be tested and worked out.

Thanks for everyone's hard work on the Joomla team and this forum.