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This is probably something simple to fix but..

I sometimes want to edit files for mods or components I installed via the install menu in joomla.  I use ws_ftp pro and can't seem to overwrite any of the files, is there something I am missing? I have never had this type of problem with ftp so I am not sure what is wrong. I can overwrite files that weren't uplaoded via admin as part of com or mod with no problems.

Thanks

You will have to ask your host to CHOWN the files.. most likely they are owned by the webserver user, hence the reason your user can't access.

All the best.

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Brad Baker - Follow me on Google+
http://www.rochen.com - Joomla! Hosting, the correct way.
http://www.joomlatutorials.com <-- Joomla Help
..somewhere in this hospital the anguished oink of a pig man cries out for help..

Additionally, check to make sure the permissions on the files you are attempting to overwrite are "644" and not anything less like "444".  I know this one might sound weird, but I've seen it before. 

Good luck with this... one of these two suggestions should resolve your problem.

Brad,

I have found that the owner rights for the files that I installed through the installers have been set to the apache server.  I am having problems getting my Webhost to CHOWN the files for me.  They are basically saying that they don't give technical support for Joomla, go look at the Joomla forum for support, and that if I want permissions back for my files (they are telling me that it is my fault that I set the permissions wrong) that they are going to have to reset the entire directory of my website. 

This doesn't sound right.  I have heard you say before that it is about a 3 minute process for them to CHOWN files.  Is there a way to avoid this in Joomla so I don't have to ask them to CHOWN my files when I install components and modules?

Charles

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From the beginning...

You are saying you never had this problem with FTP, are you sure? Isn't that ws_ftp an FTP client program? I just don't suppose to get the case, you said first you wana edit your components via the install menu, well, you mean that option that shows the content of your file (the PHP basically) and you edit it, ok? In this case if the web server is the owner/group, then you SHOULD BE ABLE to write, and only if you (your username) is not the owner/group, you can not write via FTP.
Would you please tell us exactly what you wana do? After all you wana write through Joomla or FTP? Which one does work and which one doesn't?

Charles,

Fact of the matter is that this issue is *not* a Joomla problem, it's a problem with PHP... I wish I had the link handy, but there is a rather extensive bug report on php.net about this problem.  A quick search of php.net might get you the report real quick so you can point it out to the folks over at your host.

I have a ticket with my host that simply asks them to reCHOWN my public_html folder for me and they do the whole folder (there's a switch in the CHOWN command that will do the target folder and everything underneath it) and it takes my host all of about 2 minutes to do so.  It might be worth it to ask your host what exactly they mean by "reset" when they speak of your site folder...

You know, the more and more I hear about some of these hosts that have such crappy tech support it continues to amaze me.  If I supported my clients like that I would think that I wouldn't have any clients.  *shrugs*

Good luck.

Thanks Dixen,

The way they were saying it is that the would have to reset my whole directory, in which I would loose everything.  I told them that is unfeasible and that it is a php script thing.  Then they told me to reinstall Joomla through Fantastico.  I told them that was unfeasible because I will loose everything I have edited and installed already in the process.  So now I am waiting on a response, going on day 4...in which I am kind of upset about because I have some files in the components I have installed that I need to edit to get them working properly.  Geewizz.

Charles

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From the beginning...

Greetings,

and GOOD GOD... what the hell is wrong with these people... They simply need to go to your root folder (i.e. /usr/yourusername/) and type in "CHOWN -R yourusername \public_html\"... and wait 45 freaking seconds.  ARG!!!

btw, if you have Shell access, which I seriously doubt you do if they are this horked up, but if you do you you could run chown yourself.

To be honest I think you are to the point that you respond to the ticket and ask if they have anyone over there with admisistraor rights, or and administrator background.  It would take less time for them to just chown the folder and be done as oppossed to arguing with the customer and potentially lose you over a crappy support problem.

I wish you the best of luck with this, but at this point in time I would be looking for a host with better support.

Alright Dixen, or anyone,

My webhost finally got back to me and said that it is their policy not to touch customer accounts, so they will not CHOWN my files for me.  But they are willing to give me temporary shell access (go figure).  Well, I am not familiar with Unix servers or how to run shell.  So before I tell them I want temporary access, what EXACTLY do I got to do to get my files CHOWN back to me?  I am using a Windows XP system from home.  I don't want them to give me access and then have me not solve the problem.  So what do I type and where do I go.

Any help is much appreciated.  Thanks everyone.

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From the beginning...

I got the same problem with some templates
and the chmod command did not work.

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Art changes . . . lives change . . . we change.

Okay... Wow, I'm not sure if this will really work because either ONE, they have to give you SU (superuser) or root access in order to do the CHOWN, and assuming they are going to do that they are taking a *HUUUUUUGE* sec risk by doing this.  Again, I will restate my assertion that you should be looking for a new host.  TWO, if they only give you access as your usrname, with SU access then CHOWN will not work.

Now, assuming they give you SU access all you should have to do is navigate to your root folder (which *should* be \usr\yourusrname\) and then it should be as simple as the following:



Please note that is a capital R.

Once you do that your issue should be resolved.  Again, providing they give you proper system level access to be able to use CHOWN.

I hope this all works out for you, best of luck.

Wow, you are fast Dixen, thanks.  They act like they don't even know what I am asking for.  Is the shell access where I type "chown -R youusrname publichtml," going to be in my cpanel or are they going to have to send me a link?  I am assuming that this is going to be a DOS like command screen, but where is that going to come from?

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From the beginning...

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what that is going to look like.  I know how a shell works on linux box, and while I would imagine it works similar over the web, I've never had access to a shell account on a webhost.  I would imagine it's going to be something in th CP that will take you to a "dos" like screen and you will have command line access to the server...

I hope after all the work you are putting into this they *actually* give you the proper access to be able to use it.

If not, I will have to switch hosts because I am not willing to go back and put all that work into all the code I have already had to rewrite with SMF and Joomla.  Thanks for all the tips.

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From the beginning...

The CHOWN command that you require can only be run by root. So your host will have to execute it for you..

All the best Charles.

_________________
Brad Baker - Follow me on Google+
http://www.rochen.com - Joomla! Hosting, the correct way.
http://www.joomlatutorials.com <-- Joomla Help
..somewhere in this hospital the anguished oink of a pig man cries out for help..

Thanks for telling me Brad,

Thats just real great.  I guess I will start searching for another webhost.  Too bad, they had some great deals.  I guess it means nothing without good support.

Charles

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From the beginning...

Ok, they gave me shell access, and I informed them ahead of time that I needed superuser access or root, which everyone here says they should know.  They gave me access and did not tell me if there was any other username or anything that I needed and whether they gave me the right access.  So I connected thru shell using my username and password (which it did accept) and found my directory and tried to chown the files.  It tried to chown the full directory and said Operation not permitted for every file.  So now what?  I am assuming they did not give me the permissions that I needed.  What was the point of them giving me access at all.

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From the beginning...

Yes, you will need root access... SSH is not enough.

_________________
Brad Baker - Follow me on Google+
http://www.rochen.com - Joomla! Hosting, the correct way.
http://www.joomlatutorials.com <-- Joomla Help
..somewhere in this hospital the anguished oink of a pig man cries out for help..

It is getting a bit boring.
Blaming hosting providers etc.
Maybe that is correct but there may be reasons why the hosting provider does what they do etc.

But as I said, is is getting a bit boring to see new threads about the same problem.

Just see here for one example: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... l#msg77078

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There is no failure until you give up.
Chris
http://www.sengers-au.com

Joomla 1.3 is slated to include an FTP installer that will correct this issue. However for now.. because on most host the webserver user (apache in most cases) writes the files, the user does not have access to modify files that have been written by Joomla. A simple one line SSH command will set the correct permissions. This is all a host needs to do to solve the issue people are having.

Also to avoid the issue, install components/modules/templates via ftp and you will not have these ownership issues.

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Brad Baker - Follow me on Google+
http://www.rochen.com - Joomla! Hosting, the correct way.
http://www.joomlatutorials.com <-- Joomla Help
..somewhere in this hospital the anguished oink of a pig man cries out for help..

Surprised no one has mentioned MamboXplorer

I understand that there are a lot of threads about this.  I have looked at most of them.  But as someone is new to webhosting and PHP all together, I have posted here just to try to understand the issue at hand.  I know that it is not my webhosts fault that this issue has occured.  But when they are unwilling to do anything to help me out except give me access to shell without any priviledges (which they should know they are doing), I mean come on.  They could just sit there and say "we can't help you," but then their line on their homepage that says "Award winning customer service," is just a bunch of bull.  I have waited now for six days to try to get a solution to this while my host writes me one line a day by support ticket.  I can't even do anything with Mamboxplorer (I get a bunch of error messages a page long when I try to copy a file or anything).

So no one is blaming anyone for this issue at hand, it has just come up that many webhosters are not willing to help with the situation when it is a very easy fix. 

And others just don't know that all these other threads are the same issue with all the different titles.  Most newbies don't even know that it is an ownership problem at first.

Since the Joomla Dev Team is on the issue, that is a relief.  But be kind to those of us that are searching for support.

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From the beginning...

This was mentioned in many other threads about this problem.
However, yes mamboXplorer does help but does not fix the problem.

_________________
There is no failure until you give up.
Chris
http://www.sengers-au.com

99% of hosts will do this for you if your annual site charge is above £50 or your on a mid or premier hosting package.

I take it from all this caffafle that PHP cannot set USER ownership rights then?

The best way to develop a site is using a local machine (saves packet sniffing as well from competitors) and mirror that on the live site by replacing a components directory/files via FTP if you need to tweak for different PHP or MySQL versions.

I don't thinkl php and/or your host is to blame.
It is just the way Joomla and #ambo handles the installation.
They see the main problem as being the setting up of the tables for the new components and/or modules etc.
That is why you said, using ftp, BUT don't forget the tables.
Otherwise, it won't work.

_________________
There is no failure until you give up.
Chris
http://www.sengers-au.com

Actually you would be greatly mistaken there Chris...

Absolutely php is to blame, this is a bug in php that *only* occurs when safe more is turned on... bug = fault, no way around it there.  Additionally, absofrickinlutely his host is to blame.  If they are going to offer php as one of their platforms under which sites can be hosted and/or developed then they should be prepared to handle *ALL* requests for support due to bugs and/or fitness for use, either implicit, or implied.  Period.  If they do not then it's a host that will just never cut the mustard...

In today's webhost market where space and transfer are sold 100 times over there are only two places a host can hope to gain and keep their customers... Uptime and support.  I don't know what host company he is using at this point in time, but IMO they are just another crappy webhost.

This happened on my webhosting with safe mode turned off.  And I also agree and told my webhosting just that, that if they cannot fix the problem then they should never say they support php, Joomla, or Mambo, especially with installers like Fantastico.  Using Fantastico is convincing your customers to install those scripts on your webhost without any localhost development. 

And again, it would be a great solution to just do everything locally and then FTP it to the host, but I have found several components that don't work on my localhost machine (I am not sure why, may be my own settings, but without any leads I don't have time to find out - and I have found through these forums that I am not the only one running Windows that has these problems).  So the only way to really develop your site is by having it already online. 

If I am paying so much a year, it should not be too much to ask to have a compitant webhost run a two-minute script through shell to save a customer from going somewhere else.

But then again Chris, I also understand that it is not the issue of the host and this issue of who's fault it is was not what started this thread.  Plain and simple - there is an issue with php and there is a simple fix.  The fix was posted in this thread and those that have a good webhost have solved the problem.  Those that don't, will have to find alternatives, which there is not many. 

Thanks for all the support by the way guys.

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From the beginning...

Interesting... I have yet to hear of this one showing up when safe mode was off.  I will have to go look at the bug report on php.net again to see if anyone mentioned it (I admit only scanning the first 20-30 replies to the initial bug report).

I was not going to answer here anymore after disagreeing with the statements Dixon made because that might have resulted in a Yes/No argument and would not have gone anywhere.
I am going to sit down and work myself out an ftp model with auto-fill of the tables in the database.
After all, that is what is required, a solution for the sufferers.
But charlwilla6 is correct, does not matter if safe mode is on or off.

_________________
There is no failure until you give up.
Chris
http://www.sengers-au.com

Ok, this really has nothing to do with this topic now, but I got to ask:

I think my webhost got mad or something at me for complaining that they couldn't help me and now all my support tickets are closed and my website is down.  I know this is not anyone's issue but mine, but what do I do now?  I had a clients site on that server that I was working on and now I can't get access to anything.  This is ridiculious.  All because I wanted them to just CHOWN my files.

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From the beginning...