File Permission Problems (Zip Distribution)

[theblob]

Help!

I want to install the Beta version of vBulletin, and am having problems with permissions.

I've extracted the files from the Zip file, and the rightmost 6 bits of the file permissions are all 0. For example, the directories are 700. This causes problems when I try to access the files through a URL at the web site. I really don't want to try to guess what the permission of each file in the vBulletin distribution should be. What do I do?

The machine that I downloaded to (not the server) is running Cygwin (under Windows XP). The file that I downloaded from the members area of the vBulletin site was a Zip file. There didn't seem to be any way to get anything other than a Zip file. Does the members area of the vBulletin site give different files depending on what kind of OS it thinks the download is going to? I wonder if (a) the vBulletin file permissions were tested in a Cygwin or Windows environment, and (b) if I had a way to download a tar file instead of a ZIP file, that might provide a workaround.

[Scott MacVicar]

file permissions are not set within the file and are held by the operating system, try moving to the directory above where vb3 is installed and typing

chmod -R +0755 vB3folder

I'll ask Kier about providing a tar.gz and a .zip format.

[theblob]

file permissions are not set within the file and are held by the operating system, try moving to the directory above where vb3 is installed and typing

chmod -R +0755 vB3folder

I'll ask Kier about providing a tar.gz and a .zip format.

That is not true. Tar files do contain permission information. I don't know about Zip files.

Is adding execute permissions to every file really the thing to do here? For example it does not seem to make sense to make .gif files be executable.

Thanks for asking about providing a tar.gz file.

[Steve Machol]

That is not true. Tar files do contain permission information. I don't know about Zip files.

That's true for tar files but not zip. Check 'umask' for the default permissions for files and directories created on your server.

[Mike Sullivan]

Is adding execute permissions to every file really the thing to do here? For example it does not seem to make sense to make .gif files be executable.

Well, depending on your setup, you don't even need to make the PHP files executable. If PHP is being run as an Apache module, then I believe you only need to give <the user Apache is running as> read permissions to the PHP files. Logically it'd be the same with image files.

I forget off hand the bit ordering of permissions, but 644 often seems to be just fine.

[Stadler]

I forget off hand the bit ordering of permissions, but 644 often seems to be just fine.

I'm not quite sure, but I think, they have to be CHMODded to 755, if PHP is running as a CGI Module.

[JdS]

I'll ask Kier about providing a tar.gz ...

I will apreciate this too...

[Mike Sullivan]

I'm not quite sure, but I think, they have to be CHMODded to 755, if PHP is running as a CGI Module.

That's true. I was actually trying to refer to PHP as an Apache module in my post, rather than as a CGI.

[theblob]

I know how UNIX permissions work, and I know that I can add various permissions to all the files. But that is not really what I want to do, and it probably isn't what the vBulletin developers want either. I want to run the distribution with the permissions that are distributed, so I am testing the thing that will be distributed.

Would someone please answer the questions I raised in the original message? Does the web page in fact check to see what kind of system the browser is running on and distribute different files depending on what kind of system it is? If so, is there some way that I can get a tar file even though I'm on windows? And would you consider making the tar file available through the web page? And would you please include instructions for what people should do when they use the zip file? And was the zip file tested? And if so then would you please update the instructions to indicate what people need to do in order to make a zip file work, taking into account different setups that people have on their machines?

I want to try vB3 out!

[Mike Sullivan]

Does the web page in fact check to see what kind of system the browser is running on and distribute different files depending on what kind of system it is?

No.

If so, is there some way that I can get a tar file even though I'm on windows? And would you consider making the tar file available through the web page?

At this point, no. But we'll look into a tar distribution.

And would you please include instructions for what people should do when they use the zip file? And was the zip file tested? And if so then would you please update the instructions to indicate what people need to do in order to make a zip file work, taking into account different setups that people have on their machines?

99.9% of the time this really just consists of extracting the zip and FTP'ing the files over to your server.

As for your permissions, 644 across the board might work (I haven't tried it with Cygwin personally). If not, the PHP files will probably need to be 755.

[Scott MacVicar]

Kier says tar files shouldn't be a problem and we'll sort that out before the vB3 final release.

[theblob]

Ed and Scott, thanks.

I am confused about something. I follow the vBulletin installation instructions exactly, with a machine setup that doesn't seem unusual, and I get a vBulletin installation that is unusable because of permission problems. Yet the suggestions to this point about how to proceed have essentially been, "change the permissions yourself." There is not even agreement about what to change the permissions to. I have explained why changing the permissions myself does not seem like a great idea for me or the vBulletin team. It is a serious problem when someone following the instructions on a not-uncommon machine setup runs into an unusable installation. To this point the problem seems to have been treated pretty casually. I do not understand that. I'd think that the team would want to address problems of this severity as early as possible in beta testing, not at a vague future date that is "some time before the final release."

Also, I still do not have a very good solution to the permission problems. What I would consider a good solution is something that allows me to follow the public instructions exactly and end up with something that works. The solutions I have so far are essentially, "hack on the permissions until you get something that works."

Your thoughts?

[Scott MacVicar]

I think that we expected most people to download the zip, extract it there and then upload it via a FTP client and the system would set the permissions appropriately as it was uploaded.

[theblob]

I think that we expected most people to download the zip, extract it there and then upload it via a FTP client and the system would set the permissions appropriately as it was uploaded.

This is exactly what I did (except I used scp instead of ftp).

[Steve Machol]

As I posted earlier, the permission are determined by your server when you upload or extract the files. On *Nix systems you can set the default permissions with 'umask'.

Also as Scott posted, the files generally need to be 644 unless PHP is running in CGI mode, in which case the php files need to be 755.