[Pmwiki-users] AdminQ2 - Problems with directory permissions on Unix server

[Steven Leite]

After months of testing PmWiki on local (windows) box, i'm not attempting to migrate it to the Internet on my unix account.  Just when I thought I had a handle on PmWiki and how it works .. now I'm having a nightmare trying to get the site working properly.

I thought it would be as simple as copying the whole site (as is) and uploading it to the unix server.  Then disabling a couple of windows specific items in my config.php file (like the diff/patch commands, and pathing information). 

PmWiki refused to run.  

After days of trying .. I tried out of desperationn this script to modify permissions on the wiki.d directory.

<?php
        mkdir("wiki.d");
        umask(002);
        system("/bin/cp oldwiki.d/* wiki.d");
        system("/bin/chmod 664 wiki.d/*");
?>

I don't know what it does, or how it does it, but PmWiki suddenly started working after I did that.  Needless to say the migration was NOT as easy as I expected it to be!

I wonder if we can't invest some time in making this easier for other users?  Like I said .. just when i started feeling that I had a handle on things, I was faced by this problem .. I almost gave up .. but that little script up there saved the day.

I don't know about PHP, UNIX, filepermissions, and all that stuff.  All I know is scripts have to be uploaded in txt mode, and they have to be marked as executable (in the case of perl, or .cgi .. I think php doesnt' matter).  So I can't truly appreciate the extent that Pm has gone to to make PmWiki "safe".  I see a lot of talk about it on the list, so I assume the script is very safe to run.  But at the expense of ... ???

I'm just wondering if there's a better way?  I like usemod wiki because it's a single .cgi file.  You plop it in any folder on the system, make it executable, and voila .. it goes and does it's thing.  It doesn't bother you about file permissions to make this directory or that directory.  

Maybe someone could give a brief description (or point me to a url) so that I can better appreciate the complexity and challenges faced by PmWiki and this whole business of security.

Thanks!

-S
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