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user3191018
Asked: 2018-10-13 04:33:26 +0800 CST

Joomla Configuration File writing issue with Ubuntu 16.04 and nginx

  • 772

I keep getting errors from joomla saying it can't write to.

configuration.php
An error has occurred.
0 Could not write to the configuration file

I added recommended permissions to folders 755 and files 644 with no luck.

I am using root to log into so not sure what login Joomla is using to write to a file

/var/www/websitecom.com/html

line on var/www/mywebsite.com/html folder
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root     4096 Oct 11 21:47 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root     4096 Oct 11 17:48 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     3005 Aug 26 07:59 .htaccess
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    18092 Aug 26 07:59 LICENSE.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     4883 Aug 26 07:59 README.txt
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root     4096 Sep 10 18:23 administrator
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096 Sep 10 18:23 bin
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root     4096 Oct  8 17:43 cache
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096 Sep 10 18:39 cli
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root     4096 Oct  5 18:57 components
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     3342 Oct 12 12:13 configuration.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root      974 Oct  8 17:50 favicon-16x16.png
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     1810 Oct  8 17:50 favicon-32x32.png
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    15086 Oct  8 17:50 favicon.ico
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 79731414 Oct 11 18:10 food.zip
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root     4096 Oct  5 17:45 images
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 39626638 Oct  8 18:12 images.zip
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096 Sep 10 18:23 includes
-rw-r--r--  1 root root      182 Oct 11 21:47 index.html
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     1420 Aug 26 07:59 index.php
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root     4096 Sep 10 18:23 language
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root     4096 Sep 10 18:23 layouts
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root     4096 Oct  5 11:31 libraries
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096 Oct 12 13:12 logs
drwxr-xr-x 38 root root     4096 Oct  5 18:59 media
drwxr-xr-x 33 root root     4096 Oct  5 18:58 modules
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root     4096 Oct  5 18:59 plugins
-rw-r--r--  1 root root      842 Oct  1  2014 robots.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 root root      836 Aug 26 07:59 robots.txt.dist
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root     4096 Sep 10 18:23 templates
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096 Oct 12 13:12 tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     1690 Aug 26 07:59 web.config.txt

Premissions for the html folder

drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Oct 11 17:48 .
drwxr-xr-x: command not found
root@pitamyshawarma:~# drwxr-xr-x  4 root root 4096 Oct 11 17:32 ..
drwxr-xr-x: command not found
root@pitamyshawarma:~# drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4096 Oct 11 21:47 html
drwxr-xr-x: command not found
server permissions php nginx joomla

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The NGINX web server runs as the user www-data and the group www-data by default on Ubuntu systems. (So does Apache2 but that's not necessarily relevant to this question) And the default configuration of PHP also has such setup to use the www-data user/group as well.

    The typical way to set up your website 'directory' and files is to set the user ownership to root (or your own user), and the group ownership to www-data and provide the www-data group with read/write.

    We can do this with only a few commands:

    1. Change user/group ownership for all files and folders to root:www-data.

      sudo chown -R root:www-data /var/www/websitecom.com/html

    2. Set proper permissions for directories and folders.

      Folders: 775 (rwxrwxr-x) - allow owner access and group members read/write access to folders, and allow 'other users' to traverse the directory tree

      sudo find /var/www/websitecom.com/html -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;`

      Files: 660 (rw-rw----) - allow owner access and group members read/write access to files, disallow all other users access to the files themselves.

      sudo find /var/www/websitecom.com/html -type f -exec chmod 660 {} \;`

    3. Set the setgid bit on the directories. This way, when files are created by either root or the web server, the 'group' ownership of new files will remain www-data.

      sudo find /var/www/websitecom.com/html -type d -exec chmod g+s {} \;

    4. Make sure the docroot actually has the proper permissions.

      sudo chmod 770 /var/www/websitecom.com/html
sudo chmod g+s /var/www/websitecom.com/html

    Now, your webserver should be able to write to the new configuration file.

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