Casey Hungler's questions

I am working with two users: me and www-data. Each user has their own group by default. I want to be able to easily grant read, write, and/or execute permissions to both users, without giving the permissions to the public.

My understanding of the Linux file permissions system is that if I have the following file:

test.php me:me 770

and the group me contains the users me and www-data, then both users would have full permissions for the file test.php. This is not working, however. I have added the user www-data to the group me and set the permissions to 770, but Apache says permissions are denied. If I change the file group to www-data so that it looks like

test.php me:www-data 770

the file loads fine. The problem is that I upload the files over ftp under the user me. It's easy to change the group, but it gets incredibly tedious if I have to SSH into the server every time I upload a new file to change the group. My understanding is that groups exist just for circumstances like these, but I don't understand why it's not working.

I have come to the conclusion that my PHP installation and my MySQL installation are not getting along; I’m working on making my first web page that uses MySQL for content, but after two days, man pages, online documentation, and dozens of tutorials, I just can’t get the PHP/MySQL part to work. I have an established home web server (I am the only admin/user) that runs Apache and hosts my web pages. I have MySQL installed, and was able to create and query a database through Terminal. I have PHP installed, and can use echo to print text to the document. When I work with MySQL however, everything changes…

I have a page that contains initialization stuff in . contains a few paragraphs of hardcoded HTML and then PHP code to access MySQL. When I first loaded the page, all that resulted was a blank page. I commented out the PHP section and reloaded to confirm that the plain HTML still worked, which it did. Therefore, some part of PHP was keeping any of the page from ever loading.

To begin troubleshooting my code, I left all of the PHP code commented except the following code for the server connection, which is adapted from several different tutorials:

<?
echo("<p>PHP is working</p>"); 
$ses = mysql_connect("localhost","username","password");
if(!$ses){
 echo("<p>Connection to content server failed.</p>");
 exit();
}
echo("<p>Database Connected</p>");
?>

When the page is loaded, the beginning HTML loads in addition to a paragraph reading “PHP is working” but neither the failure or success message appear. I removed the If structure from the code - so that only two echos and the mysql_connect remained – and got the same result.

It seems that the mysql_connect feature is causing the server to stop loading the code when it is run, but I’m out of ideas for how to fix it. For the record: I’ve modified the php.ini file to include the “connection = msql.so” line, and I’m using MySQL 5.5, Apache 2.2.22, PHP 5.3.10, Ubuntu 12.04. Also, both my router and modem have been configured to forward port 3306 to the server – though I don’t see how that should be necessary – and my MySQL username and password have been triple checked and are identical to the ones that I use successfully in Terminal.

What am I missing?

A few months ago I converted an old desktop computer into a basic server by putting Ubuntu (desktop version) onto it and setting up apache2, etc. I have SSH configured so that I can work on it remotely, and use FTP to move files. When I tried to access my server yesterday I found that it was down, and I could not get in at all. I'm at college, and my server is at home, so I called my mom, who told me that there had been a brief power outage at my house, and I concluded that my server had restarted. I have the computer set to require a password on startup, so it turns out that it had just been sitting at the log in screen for the past few days, waiting for a password. My instinctive question is whether SSH or some other program can be used to log the system in (as if in person) from a remote computer after the server has been restarted.

As I said, I currently have the computer set to require a password to log into the one and only user account on the server upon startup. When I SSH or FTP, I use the same log in/password, though I'm guessing that I'm going to be told that this is the wrong way to go about doing it, and is the source of my problem. In that case, what would you recommend?

Thanks in advance.

In response to the comment and answer, I don't know what the X environment is, so it's probably not something that I want to log in to. The way I have the server set up, when you physically turn the machine on, it boots up, and then asks for a password, just like most normal computers do. You have to enter the password in order to get to the desktop and run applications. From my experience, the web server application, ssh server application, etc. are not active until the password is entered and the desktop is loaded. Hence, I need to log in to the computer in order for it to come on line as a server. What I need is a way to get the server running again (at desktop, with apache) after the machine loses power and boots back up without having to physically enter a password in person.

I found a 6 GB IDE HDD in my basement. I want to plug it in and see what might be on it. The drive seems to be recognized in BIOS.

I can't find it in Ubuntu to view files, and Ubuntu is the only OS on that particular computer. I was wondering if Ubuntu has an equivalent to the Windows feature "My Computer", which lists all available drives/storage devices. Typically, My Computer shows C:, which can be opened to view all of your directories and files. At this point, it is very similar to Ubuntu's Home Folder.

How to view/select all available partitions of that drive or all available HDD's without formatting or tampering with the contents in any way?

OK!!! I've successfully connected from an external network on both ssh and http. I changed a BUNCH of settings though before I got it to work, so I'm going to slowly change some of them back to see where the problem(s) really was(were).

Thanks for all the suggestions!!!

This ought to be a pretty simple answer, but I can't find it anywhere, and it's really confusing me. I am new to Ubuntu, and am trying to configure a web server. I have gone through tons of tutorials, and run into "host" or "localhost" very often. For example, to execute ssh user@localhost, I would replace user with my username, and localhost with my internal IP address (connecting from the same local network). That much, I can do.

I just want to make sure that all I have to do is replace host with my external (ISP provided) IP address to ssh from an outside network??? The thing is that I have done that, and it hasn't worked, so I want to make sure that my syntax isn't the problem. Thanks so much for your patience and support.

Ok. Everyone's saying I need to forward ports. I did forward ports 80 and 22 through my router to my server, but it's not working. I also contacted my ISP, and they said that they didn't know of any ISP restrictions on ports. So, yes. I think I set it up, but it's still not working. Also, I completely bypassed my router, and connected my server directly to the modem, which does NOT have an internal router, and the problem was still there. Since somebody upvoted this question, I can now post my pic :)

I'm trying to create a basic web server. I am running Ubuntu 12.04 desktop. I have installed LAMP and set up html files, and when I open a browser and navigate to 192.168.1.95 (static internal IP of my server), or 192.168.2.2, the modified index.html file that came with Apache2 appears on screen. The problem is with connecting through internet, rather than intranet. I have used a cell phone (WiFi disabled) to connect through the cell network, as well as giving my external IP to a friend, and asking him to try to open the site. Each time, however, we receive error 502 Bad Gateway - Response Error, a bad response was received from another proxy server or the destination origin server.

Let me say that I have already gotten disabled the remote configuration option in my router, so that's not the problem, and I have already forwarded port 80 through my router. Yes, I'm pretty sure I did it right. In fact, to test that the router wasn't the problem, I connected my server directly to my modem, which does NOT have an internal router, and still got the same error. A Google search has told me that my ISP (CenturyLink) does not block port 80, and that others with the same ISP have been successful in hosting their own sites from home. Obviously I'm not very knowledgeable about this subject, but from my understanding, I've ruled out everything except the server, which means that something is either blocking port 80 on the way in, or the data is never making it back out. My question is this:

Is there something (firewall, etc.) in Ubuntu that could be responsible for such an error?

I have already enabled, disabled, and opened holes through UFW, and that hasn't made a difference. One tutorial I read suggested that AppArmor could be a problem, and they suggested that it be uninstalled, so I followed their instructions on how to do so, but I have noticed that there is still an AppArmor folder in /etc/, so I'm not exactly sure what all got done. If there is any other information you could give me, I would truly appreciate it. In the event that I overlooked some blatantly obvious solution, I'm really sorry to bother you all, but it hasn't been for lack of effort; I've been working on this for the vast majority of the past two days...

Also, I'm not sure if it makes any difference, or if this is actually related, but I'm having the same problem with SSH; I can SSH into this system over my local network using username@local_IP, but I can't get it to work over a non-local network (yes, I do realize that I need more than just a local IP) Maybe this helps narrow down the problem, then again, maybe not...

Thanks in advance for your time and support!!!

I am trying to get information in order to eliminate possible sources for a problem I am having, as described in another question. Can anybody confirm that Ubuntu (either ISO install or WUBI) works reliably as a dual boot on a system running Windows 7 Service Pack 1. I have another system running Win 7 (not SP1) that works great, but Windows seems to be corrupting the Ubuntu file system, and I would like to rule out the SP 1 as being the problem. Otherwise, I am considering reinstalling windows using a pre-SP1 install disk, since I know that a computer installed from this disk works well with Ubuntu. See my other question for more info: Ubuntu install can't find hard drives Thanks guys!

I recently got a Dell Inspiron Special Edition 7720 computer. I am trying to install Ubuntu along side Windows. When I use the WUBI installer, the installation of Ubuntu works as long as I do not boot into Windows; if I boot into Windows, when I go back into Ubuntu, I am given a variety of error messages which claim to have corrupt or missing kernel/root directory, etc. I have been working with this problem for about a week, and have reinstalled Ubuntu MANY times. So far, I have eliminated all of the following problems: Corrupt WUBI installation (Downloaded multiple times, used on other systems), I have tried using a CD and a flash drive, both of which work on other computers. I know that no program within Ubuntu is creating the problem. I know that others have successfully installed Ubuntu on a computer with my operating system (Windows 7 SP1).

This is a much shortened version of the original question, which has been up for about 5 days, and included a more detailed description of the problem, but left everyone clueless as to the source of this problem. When I spoke with the Dell service technician who came over today to replace my keyboard, he suggested that the driver for my HDD was so new that it was not compatible with the current version of Ubuntu. His reasoning is as follows:

1) During an install from a flash drive or CD, where I am supposed to get the option to wipe my system or create a dual boot, I get a window that asks me to select a hard drive partition, but none are listed.
2) This model of computer was made public in June of this year, while Ubuntu was released in April

Adopting this theory, it would seem to me that the WUBI install fails after booting into Windows because Ubuntu can no longer find the files that it needs to load.

Does this theory seem at all plausible to anyone? I just want to install Ubuntu and have it stay on my computer. I don't care how I put it there, I just need it to work, so I would TRULY appreciate any advice or suggestions anyone could give.

Thanks so much for your time and support!!!