Magento – Internal server error when setting full permissions

downloadermagento-1.9permissions

I am working on magento 1.9.x. I have currently moved my local project instance to new server.
When I go to Connect Manager(/downloader), it gives warning message saying, "Warning: Your Magento folder does not have sufficient write permissions.".

After some research, I had tried with putting 777 permissions to root directory, but due to which it gives Internal Server Error and none of the page works.

If I just put 777 to downloader directory only, then Magento Connect Manager redirects to 404 page. I didn't understand why this happens on this server.

Is there any issue with server configuration or do I need to give permissions to any other directory as well?

Best Answer

Depending on your server configuration and running webusers you need to setup write access to some directories. All other files should be read only to the webuser! This will make sure your website isn't defaced easily.

First of all, there are a lot of reasons to not have a /downloader directory on production environments. There have been some patches in the past for the downloader. Add some sort of security with basic auth on these directories

First of all, reset all to read only/default.

# In your Magento root directory
# This will put all files in readonly for group/other and write for user
chmod ugo-rwx,ugo+rX,u+w -R .

# Some files need execute rights
chmod +x cron.sh mage

# Some directories need write access
chmod go+w -R media var downloader includes

Also remove downloader/connect.cfg so it will re-initiate.

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Downloader – Fix CONNECT ERROR: Unknown Resource Type

You need to republish the extension using the appropriate settings, just as you did originally.

Magento – Problems with Permissions and write access for Magento Connect when trying to install extensions

Be thankful you're getting permission errors -- there's a few cases where Magento Connect runs into permission problems but reports the extension as installed.

What you need to do is going to depend heavily on how you're running PHP/Apache, but making an educated guess based on the contents of your post

Magento needs write access to write to files/directories
Which means PHP/Apache needs write access to files/directories
If PHP/Apache creates a files and the web server is running under a generic apache user, then PHP/Apache should have all the access it needs.

So, when you say

there are certain files that are created by Magento that I cannot modify via FTP.

These are files and directories you don't need to worry about changing permissions for. If Apache/PHP created these files, then Apache/PHP doesn't need them to be 777 to modify them.

Files that you create "need" 777 permission so Apache/PHP can write them. Concentrate on that, and then debugging specific problems reported by Connect, and you should be good to go.

(I say "need" because brute force 777ing things still strikes me as a poor design decision, but that's a different post)

Update: Per the comment I'm about to add below, if you need to change the permissions of an Apache create folder, creating a small PHP script

<?php
    chmod('/path/to/file/or/folder', 0777);

and then running it in a web context is one way to do that.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Downloader – Fix CONNECT ERROR: Unknown Resource Type

Magento – Problems with Permissions and write access for Magento Connect when trying to install extensions

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