I have a fresh copy of Ubuntu 10.10 server with a working LAMP installation. I downloaded SugarCRM and browsed to its directory to open the installer (via Firefox). The installer appears fine, I accept the license agreement, and it proceeds to check file permissions.
It advises that several directories need looser permissions (chmod 766), and I adjust them accordingly. After making the changes, I click "recheck" and the page just reloads as blank (white). There are no errors visible, nothing in the server logs (Apache/PHP) and installation cannot continue.
I'm able to get back to the installation tool by readjusting permissions back to my default (0755 for directories, 0644 for files). All files/folders are owned by root and the www-data group.
Any idea about what's wrong?
A quick thought would be that Apache NEEDS execute permissions on a directory to serve anything out of that directory. You're removing execute permissions (4 for read, 2 for write, 1 for execute = rwxrw-rw-), so apache can no longer access the SugarCRM directory. If the files are owned by 'youruser:www-data' you could try a 'chmod -R 775 .' in the document root.