Is this a server issue?

I do not know which forum to put this post in so I picked what I thought was right. I think this may be a server issue but I am unsure. Let me explain what is going on.

I am having a server problem with one of my VB domains and it is not happening on any of my other VB sites so I am hoping that someone with some experience can shed some light on this and help me fix it.

I have set up my config.php file to use the datastore_cache.php file as VB has designed it to be used. I have set it to CHMOD 777. Then after I access my Admincp and do anything in the Admincp and save it the file reverts back to CHMOD 644 and then I can no longer wrtiten to it. In fact it changes the permissions so that even I can not change it back to CHMOD 777 again.

Let me shed a little light one all I have done to me server lately.

I updated my PHP to PHP 5 about two weeks ago and then I noticed this problem. I don?t know if I can blame this on the PHP5 upgrade or not because I also have four other VB sites running on this server and they do not have this problem.

Can someone shed some light on this that may know what I can do to fix this?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Did you also set the permission for the ./includes/datastore directory?

[attroll]

The directory that is it in is 775. It should not have to be 777. Only the file datastore_cache.php should be 777. But it keeps doing what I mentioned in the first post.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Try setting the directory to 777 or ensure that it is owned by the user/group that your webserver is running under.

[attroll]

Ok we got it fixed so it stays at 777 but now it does not save changes to the file. I have to do some more digging now.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

And the current file permissions are?

If the directory in which the file is created is set to 777, then the file should also get the correct permissions, unless the account under which the file is created has a strange UMASK set. Under what user/group is the file created and what is the current owner/group of the directory.

[attroll]

The directory that is falls under is 775. It should not have to be 777 should it?

--------------- Added [DATE]1199526297[/DATE] at [TIME]1199526297[/TIME] ---------------

I tried changing the directory to 777 and that did not help either.

If I start out with a new datastore_cache.php file and make it CHMOD 777 and then open up my Admincp it reads the contents from the database into the file and saves the file. Then when I try to delete a forum is says that it was successful but after is says that then it brings up the forum listing again but it it still shows the forum that I just deleted. It seems as though it did not get deleted. I then try to click on the forum that I tried to delete and it says "Invalid forum specified".

To me it seems like it is not writing back to the datastore_cache.php file with the changes but nothign is getting changed. The time changes on the file but nothing I do gets changed.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Let's look at some possible causes.

First of all what is the username/accountname under which the site is running?

Next what are the current permissions and user/group for:
- ./includes directory
- ./includes/datastore directory
- ./includes/datastore/datastore_cache.php file

You say that the time is updated on the file but you don't see the changes. Can you verify if the changed data is written to the file or not.

Also are you using any caching mechanism that might be serving an old version of the file?

[attroll]

Answer to question #1
For security reasons I will use the name "blaze" instead of the username/accountname that I actually use. Here is the permissions.

Answer to question #2
root@at [/home/blaze/public_html/forum]# ll -d ./includes
drwxr-xr-x 9 blaze blaze 12288 Jan 5 12:42 ./includes/

root@at [/home/blaze/public_html/forum]# ll -d ./includes/datastore
drwxr-xr-x 2 blaze blaze 4096 Jan 5 12:14 ./includes/datastore/

root@at [/home/blaze/public_html/forum]# ll ./includes/datastore/datastore_cache.php
-rwxrwxrwx 1 blaze blaze 225479 Jan 5 15:14 ./includes/datastore/datastore_cache.php*

Answer to question #3
Yes I can view the datastore_cache.php and verify that none of the changes such as adding a forum is getting written to the file.

Answer to question #4
I am unsure of what you mean by this question. I am using the datastore_cache.php file that came with VB 3.6.8 and that is the verision I am upgraded to. Should I try and older file? I looked at all the 3.0 and up versions and they all look the same.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

root@at [/home/blaze/public_html/forum]# ll -d ./includes/datastore
drwxr-xr-x 2 blaze blaze 4096 Jan 5 12:14 ./includes/datastore/


Datastore directory should be set to 777

About #4
I am not talking about vBulletin versions. I was suggesting that maybe a caching mechanism used on your server still had an old copy of the file in memory and serving that. But first set the directory permissions correct and take it from there.