Topic: unable to see phpBB web pages

[mark russell]

Firstly if this seems too simple a question, my appologies, being very new to LINUX and to SME im learning.

So to my problem.

Ive installed the phpBB2 package word for word as in the how to document written by mr brown. But when I go to www.xxxxxxx.xxx/phpBB i get a message saying I am not authorised to view this web page.

Now I guess somewhere along the line the access rights for this directory have got mucked up and I need to change them, right ?  If so any pointers will be most welcome, if I'm completley barking up the wrong tree anyone point me in the right direction, please ?

Thanks

[Dan Brown]

First, are you going to http://yourserver/phpBB, or to /phpBB2?  The howto specifies phpBB2.  Not that it's a huge deal if you chose phpBB _consistently_ all through the search...

If that isn't it, yes, it does sound like a permissions problem.  Try this:

# cd /opt
# ls -l
# cd phpBB2
# ls -l

What do you get?

[Dan Brown]

That should be "_consistently_ all through the HOWTO".  Sorry about that...

[mark russell]

Thank you for your help. It was very late when I was working on this and couldnt see the wood for the trees. My problem must have been due to a typing error on this line

oot@e-smith /opt]# tar zxf ~/phpbb/phpBB-2.0.0.tar.gz

as there was no php directory.

Ah well, what a great way of learning.

So once again many thanks, and well done on the how to

[Tim]

Hey Dan or someone that had the same problem,

I'm almost positive that my problem is permissions. this is what I found.

If you can help, I'd greatly appreciate it. I put the most important file. if you need other ones please let me know.

Thanks

/opt ls -l
drwxrwx---   10 root     root         4096 Nov 16 16:50 phpBB2

/opt/phpBB2 ls -l
-rwxrwxrwx    1 www      www             0 Aug  7 18:21 config.php
-rw-rw----    1 ntadmin  ntadmin     14750 Mar 31  2002 index.php
-rw-rw----    1 ntadmin  ntadmin     34678 Jul 19 16:58 install.php
-rw-rw----    1 ntadmin  ntadmin      7345 Sep 20 12:40 login.php

[Dan Brown]

Hmmm, did you download the .zip file and unzip it on your workstation?  Yep, permissions are hosed.  /opt/phpBB2 should be mode 755, and all the .php files should be 644.

[Tim]

Thanks Dan

That was the problem, except I couldn't get it to work in /opt/phpBB2
I had deleted and tried to re-install it from the command line to there. I had no errors, but it seemed like the link to /opt/phpBB2 wasn't working (the alias part of script). So I unzipped it into /home/e-smith/files/primary/html/pphBB2. The only modification to the 93phpBB script was I changed all of the /opt/phpBB2 to the new paths and it worked.

2 quick questions if I may.

Is this was a security risk?
Why does e-smith install web-stuff to /opt and then use links?

Thanks again Dan


Tim

[Dan Brown]

A security risk in using pphbb instead of phpbb?  I can't see why.

Installing in /opt isn't really an e-smith-specific thing, but was recommended a while back by one of the developers (I think by Charlie) as a security measure.  If you put the app in an ibay, any user on the LAN can view the PHP source for any of the files.  By putting it in /opt, you've restricted that.  There may be other reasons as well.