Problem getting write permission to root

installation
#1

Hi Folks,

I’m getting the familiar message:

Fatal error: Root site directory have to be readable and writable. in ….sitecake/2.4.8/config/requirements.php on line 26

At least I think it is familiar because I’ve seen it here on other topics. I tried giving /sitecake and sub-folders the full 777 but to no avail. I tried to give the root read and write but was unable to.

So I contacted my host - FatCow - and they have confirmed that they don’t allow write access at root. I’ve just written back to them to clarify that I don’t need write access to their physical server root and whether they’ll grant me write access to the root of my website.

But if the answer is still “no” is there another workaround?

Cheers

Rob

#2

Hi, any news from your hosting provider? I answer from them is still no try to set FTP adapter in configuration. Create config.php file inside sitecake dir and add FTP config. You can see example of FTP config in sitecake/2.4.8/config/default.php

#3

Hi there!

Well, the answer from FatCow was a big fat “no” to giving me write access to my root. But they did recommend to try pointing my website to a sub-folder. I imagine that once I’ve done that, I can set access to my sub-folder as I want. I can then reinstall Sitecake and see if that works.

I’m doing this now. I’ll let you know. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll try your workaround.

Rob

#4

Success! I finally got there! I got there with the help of FatCow, and here’s what we did just in case this helps anyone else.

  1. So yes, you do need the root to be read\writeable and if, like FatCow, your hosting provider doesn’t let you do anything with your root, then the answer is to create a new sub-folder and then move your website to the new folder. You can then change the pointer for your website so that requests go to the new sub-folder.

  2. Don’t set folder access to 777 and sub-folders like I did. It worked for my website when I set it to 777 but sitecake didn’t like it and threw up a 500 error page whenever I tried to access the sitecake.php page. The folks at FatCow found this out and changed my permissions back to 755 for my new root and for sub-folders, including the sitecake folder. Now I can access the sitecake.php and log in.

  3. You need to create an .scignore file if login is slow or even failing. Login was slow for me, ending up after perhaps 3 minutes in another HTTP 500 error page. My website is quite big, with over 50 sub-folders. I then remembered that I saw an article here about .scignore and remembered too that I hadn’t created one! Set this file up with all of my sub-folders to be ignored - and hooray - login to sitecake is quick and I see the interface for the first time - in about 3 weeks or so!

Now I can properly play with sitecake! Hope this helps anyone :slight_smile:

#5

Hi. I’m glad you figured it out. Thanks for sharing this.