Problems transferring to new host (v 6.1.2)

[Mark Crisell]

Hi,

Actinic Developer v6.1.2

4 sites.

Out leading site is getting rather busy and we're getting bandwidth penalties so we've gone ahead and secured a new Vitual Private Server with Verio.

Having set the server up, I thought I'd create a test site and upload to give it a bit of a testing. Have spent a couple of days now struggling with upload and permissions and it's driving me round the twist and starting to affect my sleep!!!!

Anyway, have read through a number of posts on here dating back a while with people having similar problems with it managing okay to "Send base files" (to the cgi-bin) but then it has all sorts of problems when it has to upload the ".fil" files (to acatalog). It generally "stops responding" (even according to CTRL ALT DEL) but sometimes comes back to life (after a long pause) and says it's struggling with permissions or is out of space.

It's not out of space

The answers in the forum seemed to suggest that version 6.1.5 with its enhanced FTP may well sort out the problems. But with 4 sites to update, I begin to worry exactly what I might be letting myself for.

Could anyone comment as to the benefits of moving to 6.1.5 and if indeed it will help us with the FTP/permissions problem?

Any comments greatly appreciated.

[Mark Crisell]

Hang on... this is wierd.

I've just gone to check the permissions on the files in acatalog and I notice SOME files have an "owner" of the FTP user ID (let's call it smith) and there's a number of others that are owned by "www".

How can that be? They've all got timestamps of this morning when I did a site refresh

I'm going to delete everything via FTP and refresh again.

[Mike Hughes]

If you have ftp problems, make sure you're using passive ftp. I've lost count of the number of people who've had this problem.

Mike

[Mark Crisell]

I've had that on.... then off.... then on.... then off...

[Mark Crisell]

Ok... I've erased all files from acatalog folder, and CHMOD'd the acatalog folder to be 777 with the owner as "smith" (the ficticious FTP user ID!).

I've also removed the .fil files from my sites folder on the local machine.

Have run through a successful network test in advanced network settings.

Time for a site refresh:

"Sending Base Files" - no problem.
"Sending Catalog Files" - started okay, sent a few files, but when it reached "fullprice.fil", it stopped dead, resulting in Actinic "Not responding".

I left it ages, and it eventually reported an FTP error, but continued on (despite me hitting CANCEL!) to a "Completed" message, albeit it runs very slowly especially around the merging process.

This is the wierd bit, to me anyway, but when I go look at the files within acatalog (either via putty or via cuteFTP) I see that most of the files are "owned" by 'www' and not the ftp user-id of 'smith'. What? How? I'm a bit green about the gills when it comes to server configuration, but I don't understand how this is happening?

fullprice.fil hasn't been created in the acatalog file (not surprisingly).

"Use Passive FTP Transfers" is NOT ticked, but I have forwarded port 20 to this local machine so I didn't feel that was an issue.

HELP!!

[Mark Crisell]

If anyone's got any ideas where to go from here I'd be grateful, even if it's a vague pointer?

I'm having no luck whatsoever

[Mark Crisell]

I'm absolutely clutching at straws here. I think I've read nearly every post of this forum over the last few days!!

Latest update is:

I've set up an evaluation installation of Developer. Downloaded and applied the 6.1.5 patch. The "demo" shop that Actinic defaults to is being used. I've set the advanced network up and tested without a hitch.

Use passive FTP transfers is ticked.
Ignore passive transfer errors is ticked.
Use Enhanced FTP is ticked.

The ACATALOG folder has been totally removed from the host. All .cat and .fil files removed from the local site1 folder.

I've got the Netgear Router and I've changed the MTU from 1458 to 1500.

WEB REFRESH : Uploaded all files - seemingly okay - until it reached the merging step where it crashed with the error message:

An error occurred while merging files on the remote site. The web site index has been corrupted. Catalog is unable to update the index. Copy ..htdocs/acatalog/fulltext.fil to ../htdocs/acatalog/oldtext.fil failed. Permission denied. Please refresh the site.

From the Actinic FTP log file:

+00000 [0] Option - Client time out set to 15000
+00000 [0] Option - Connection time out set to 25000
+00000 [0] Option - Interactive
+00000 [0] Option - Maximum retries set to 3
+00000 [0] Option - Retry delay set to 3000
+00000 [0] Option - Passive Errors set
+00000 [0] Option - Log Directory set to C:\Program Files\Actinic Ecommerce v6\Sites\Site1\
+00000 [0] (0x654) *** Thread started ***
+00000 [0] ->Opening connection to shoesdirect.veriovps.co.uk on port 21
+10765 [0] <-Response:

<SNIP!>

+00000 [0] ->Sending command HELP
+00047 [0] <-Response:
214-The following commands are recognized (* =>'s unimplemented):
214-CWD XCWD CDUP XCUP SMNT* QUIT PORT PASV
214-EPRT EPSV ALLO* RNFR RNTO DELE MDTM RMD
214-XRMD MKD XMKD PWD XPWD SIZE SYST HELP
214-NOOP FEAT OPTS AUTH CCC* CONF* ENC* MIC*
214-PBSZ PROT TYPE STRU MODE RETR STOR STOU
214-APPE REST ABOR USER PASS ACCT* REIN* LIST
214 Direct comments to root@shoesdirect.veriovps.co.uk

+00000 [0] CHMOD Commands will be ignored as SITE command not supported by server

I am completely and utterly stuck now. I'm in dire need of food, water and sleep... please help!!!

[Mike Hughes]

I ahven't read the full thread recently but have you got all your directory permissions set to 755?

Mike

[Mark Crisell]

Thanks Mike, but yes. Both the cgi-bin and the acatalog folders are set to 755.

[Mike Hughes]

Hmm. Looks like you've struggled enough and no one here has had a simialr problem. If you have actinic cover try calling actinic support, other wise email them from here: http://www.actinic.co.uk/support/index.htm

Mike

[Mark Crisell]

I think you're right, I've been hanging out hoping that someone would come up with a miracle cure

[pinbrook]

or try Verio

I seem to remenber ages and ages ago something being said about cgi bins and verio virtual servers

[I-CC]

From what you have said, it looks like your ownerships for the domain are not set up correctly.

Your server will have a number of files for allowing connections to it, be those ftp, www, email and the like.

Normally, you will create a user on the server and assign that user with permissions and access to connect on the ftp (sshd if its your server) etc etc.

Then, the vhost file that runs the files which you upload need to be also run and ownder by the same user if you want the name to stay the same, i.e. you might be running suexec, in which case it should be set to the username and group assigned.

From this limited angle, I would suggest that suexec on a username and group basis is not assigned for the vhost file for the domain, which is causing issues with who owns or can do what with those files, and as a result the apache (maybe) is taking over and any files which are created from the site (actinic files) is being assigned as www owner, which is one of the defaults for some linux solutions.

Just some ideas.

[Mark Crisell]

Thanks for the reply.

I think you've probably hit the nail on the head. On this VPS account I was uploading to the "root" domain, as in not a virtual hosted domain. So, I've created a temporary vhost (www.vpsdomain.com/~user), uploaded the site via Actinic and with a little TLC I've managed to get it up and running. But...

...the cgi-bin is set to 755, but any files that Actinic placed there are set to 644... which means that they can't be executed...

Anyway, before I came back to this thread with a summarised result I started another thread about the permissions: http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=14129

[Mark Crisell]

And finally, to conclude this thread:

As I explained above, before transferring our existing site to the new Verio VPS account I attempted to upload an Actinic demo shop to the default domain that came with the VPS (something.veriovps.co.uk). The idea being that once I'd got that working, I'd be happy to migrate the existing site over to a virtual host on that account.

To cut a long story short, I personally found it impossible to do on the parent vps domain.

Add a vhost domain, and get Verio to set up a temporary URL (something.veriovps.co.uk/~tempid) and test it that way. On first upload I did find the permissions on the contents of the cgi-bin were incorrect (see http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=14129), but manually setting them to 755 sorted out the problems there on.

A successful end to another little task! I sleep so much easier now!! Thank you to all those who lent an ear and offered advice.