Installing without write permissions? Anyone done it?

tmcw

All right, I'm thinking about setting up two installations of Vanilla on a college-related website and here's the problem: I don't have write permissions. I know, you can change them. I can't - the system is set up so that there is no way that one can get write permissions on any file anywhere in the filesystem. It's a ridiculous restriction, but that's what the higher-ups probably asked for, and what the techies had to do.

So has anyone gone through the install process without having write permissions? Will I need to rewrite the installer to output text and then write the file? Will there be problems after installation? Thanks,

Tom

nathan

all config and extension settings would have to be done by hand for one thing.

many aspects of vanilla require write settings. mostly the admin functions, as all of those settings are stored in the conf/ directory.

I would like to see if you can do it, but it would be a pain to manage. I am sure it would run though, if you did it all by hand.

lech

It *might* be possible, however there's a good chance the installer won't even allow you proceed without modifying permissions on the /conf/ directory for it to create the files it needs. Meaning you're going to have to give that directory some execution permissions which are above writing permissions. Whether you'll be able to change settings on those forums after that fact though is dependant upon your particular server and how it interprets those permissions. Which in this case, may not work out well.

Dinoboff

You can try to install the forum on your computer and set up your extension. Edit conf/setting.php to change the different path and the url, then upload the files and the DB on your server.

You won't be able to change most of the setting on the live forum.

Krak

Install locally, and get it all setup and working how you want, then just change it to match the servers settings and upload. Thats what I would go with. What Dinoboff said.

lech

While it sounds crazy, you could probably also write an extension to class out and reference changes within a new DB table and simply store the the most basic and necessary DB prefs (login/pw/host) within the one settings.php file. Consider it a summer project :) the only cost to your forum would be speed due to the extra DB hits. But yeah, otherwise what krak and dino mentioned remain the most valid options at the moment.

tmcw

Thanks for the help, I'll try that out. Egh. A server minus write permissions is barely a server.

fourmind

I realize this post is pretty old now, but if anyone else is looking to do this, you can set the directories up without write permissions, provided those directories are owned by the apache user. They'll be owned by the apache user if they have been created by a PHP script.

So you can write a script to create the directories, make sure your root directory is set to 777, run your script, which will create those directories, then chmod your root directory back to 755. It appears to work flawlessly, including having the ability to change configuration on the fly.