"Error Occured while creating the order number lock file"

[Lindan54]

Can anyone help with this problem..Orders cannot be completed on my site as Actinic cannot create the order number. This error message is diplayed at checkout.

" An error occured while creating the order number lock file (../public_html/acatalog/Backup.num). The error was Permission denied. Actinic ecommerce can not create a unique order number and can not continue. Please contact us directly with your order."

Actinic Technical Support say it is a permission issue on the server. My hosting company say all permissions are set correctly and the site should be working OK.

Any ideas? I am using Actinic catalogue version 7.0.2 and I am hosted by Iomart Rapidhost Diamond

www.brolliesgalore.co.uk

[Jan]

What are the permissions set to?

The site seems to be working fine at the moment, I had no problems placing an order.

Great site by the way, I get missing page errors when I try to look at the section below:

http://www.brolliesgalore.co.uk/acatalog/Pansyart.html

Regards,

[Lindan54]

I set all permissions to 777 for the orderlock.num and backup.num files, which I discovered means ticking ALL nine boxes. Since then it has been working OK.
Why it suddenly changed I don't know, it had been working fine for months.

Thanks

Linda

[Mike Hughes]

Quite often web hosts will update their operating software and this sometimes seems to reset file permisions to the default. I've no idea why though.

Mike

[PA.com]

Hello,

I seem to be having a similar problem as the one described above by Lindan54. I am using Internetters (Iomart) as my web hosters and apparently on Wednesday 4th May they made 'an upgrade to our Customer Database Services'. When I attempted to put a test order through this evening on my site www.Piano-Accompaniments.com, the following message occured just before I was sent to the Payment Service Provider:

'An error occurred while attempting to generate a unique order number. Actinic ecommerce is unable to lock the counter file. Permission denied'

Also, my web visitor's stats page seems to have disappeared. Beautiful.

I don't know if this is all coincidental, but on what I've read in previous posts, should I assume that Iomart have simply screwed up (yet again I may add) by altering some permission settings without having the decency or knowhow to change them back? (They're not my favourite people by the way)

Does anybody have any suggestions as to what I should do, I don't know how to set permissions for the orderlock.num and backup.num files as these files don't seem to exist on my system. When I ring up Iomart helpdesk, are there any instructions I should give them as to how to put things right.

Cheers everyone,

Paul

[James M SellerDeck]

Hi there

It seems to be a permission issue with your /acatalog/ folder regarding the orderlock.num issue.

A solution has been put on our knowledge base here , with some solutions which you can pass onto you're hosting company.

Hope that helps

[PA.com]

Thanks very much James, I recited some of the information in that page to my webhosters and the order processing seems to have been sorted out now. My stats page is still missing presumed dead though.

Is it only me that get absolutely infuriated when this type of thing happens. You pay these hosters good money and then some joker sabotages the operation of the site. This is the third time in a month that my site has stopped working correctly due to hosting errors, and each time for a different reason! Fortunately I haven't done very much marketing yet, so I didn't have queues of irate customers complaining, but if I had been losing lots of sales (not to mention the poor first impression this kind of thing gives to a business), they might well have been hearing from my solicitor.

It only takes one weak link. Actinic is superb, as is this forum; Paypal (my PSP) is fantastic, but due to Iomart's so far appalling service, the business launch I was so looking forward to has turned out to be a nightmare.

Right, moan over, I feel better now. Thanks for the help.

[simplyfurn]

I am (unfortunately) glad to hear that someone else has the same problems with their hosting provider as me. Actinic has been great, Worldpay is great, Netcetera has provided the most appalling level of service I have ever encountered over the past 5 years. On a number of occasions they have upgraded the servers to a version that won't support the previous version of Actinic without telling us so our shop simply stops working! They are supposed to be an approved partner! Also, they have deleted/taken down our site on numerous occasions by mistake then reinstated them with the permissions set incorrectly which is why I am now experiencing this 'unable to lock counter file' error. Netcetera is telling me they can't sort it out, so I've sent the link to the knowledgebase, but I hold out very little hope of them taking the time to address the problem for me. If it were easier to switch hosting providers I would have moved years ago.
Our site is at www.simplyfurnishings.com.