Installation fails: ERROR 500 Failed to create ...:mkdir(): Permission denied.

[DZoom]

Hi there,

I set up froxlor on my server and created a user account to host a small web page there.
As user i created an empty web directory, put the current contao-manager.phar in there and renamed it to contao-manager.phar.php.
The root directory of the web server is pointing to the subdir web (as mentioned in this german threads [1] or [2]). However, when calling it in a browser, the error message reads

ERROR 500 Failed to create "/var/customers/webs/myuser/contao-manager": mkdir(): Permission denied.

When looking in the webspace for that user, the web folder has access rights 755.

The server runs Ubuntu 18.04 LTS @ 4.15.0, Apache/2.4.29m mysql 5.7.25, PHP 7.2.17 with following plugins:

$ php -m
[PHP Modules]
bcmath
calendar
Core
ctype
curl
date
dom
exif
fileinfo
filter
ftp
gd
gettext
hash
iconv
imagick
intl
json
libxml
mbstring
mysqli
mysqlnd
openssl
pcntl
pcre
PDO
pdo_mysql
Phar
posix
readline
Reflection
session
shmop
SimpleXML
sockets
sodium
SPL
standard
sysvmsg
sysvsem
sysvshm
tokenizer
wddx
xml
xmlreader
xmlwriter
xsl
Zend OPcache
zip
zlib

[Zend Modules]
Zend OPcache

What am i missing?

[1] https://community.contao.org/de/show...mission-denied
[2] https://community.contao.org/de/show...-Error-500-aus

[tab]

Probably you have a problem with open_basedir. /var/customers/webs/myuser/ should be allowed there.

[DZoom]

Probably you have a problem with open_basedir. /var/customers/webs/myuser/ should be allowed there.

I should have clarified that before: In froxlor i explicitly turned the Open Basedir option off for that domain.
Turning it on just gives

ERROR 500 Failed to create "/var/customers/webs/myuser/contao-manager": mkdir(): open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/var/customers/webs/myuser/contao-manager) is not within the allowed path(s): (/var/customers/webs/myuser/web:/tmp).

As far as i remember, after reading that error i turned it off and got the 500 error from the first post.

[Spooky]

You need to make sure that the web process is allowed to create files and directories within /var/customers/webs/myuser

[DZoom]

You need to make sure that the web process is allowed to create files and directories within /var/customers/webs/myuser

I actually thought changing the access rights to write-enabled for all users would be sufficient. Seemingly it wasn't; however changing the ownership brought me one step further:

# chown -R www-data:www-data /var/customers/webs

Where i got stuck with the system's check.

[Spooky]

Did you click on "Configure" yet?

[DZoom]

Did you click on "Configure" yet?

Thanks, i was just trying that after writing the last answer, sorry

After fixing the systems check, the current problem is this message:

ERROR 500 Unknown installation status
Some files were found on your server but no known Contao version could be detected.
You must either manually repair your application or remove the following files and folders to install Contao:

- index.html
- webalizer

See also the attached screenshot:
contao.png
The thing is, the ObenBasedir option is deactivated in froxlor and the contao file is in a 'web' subdirectory. I don't get where in the installation/configuration it escaped that directory and complains about the parent directory's content (which should be none of it's business?)
any idea, how i can force contao to stay within that web subdirectory? Or what i do have to change on the php configuration or ... whereever, to get one step further?

Thanks again

[tab]

The parent directory is the place where the Contao system will get installed, so this should be reserved for your Contao installation. So It's a good idea to create the empty web directory within an empty subdirectory of your user's webspace. E.g. /var/customers/webs/myuser/myContaoProject/web. That way, you can still have other projects in parallel, residing e.g. in /var/customers/webs/myuser/myOtherProject or /var/customers/webs/myuser/myOtherContaoProject.

[DZoom]

The parent directory is the place where the Contao system will get installed, so this should be reserved for your Contao installation. So It's a good idea to create the empty web directory within an empty subdirectory of your user's webspace. E.g. /var/customers/webs/myuser/myContaoProject/web. That way, you can still have other projects in parallel, residing e.g. in /var/customers/webs/myuser/myOtherProject or /var/customers/webs/myuser/myOtherContaoProject.

Now that's an interesting fact, i didn't get that anywhere. Thank you.
Anyway, after the cms was successfully downloaded, i can still access the contao manager, but i cannot access the backend under /contao/install:

The requested URL /contao/install was not found on this server.

same for /contao:

The requested URL /contao was not found on this server.

So how can i access the backend now?
The folder structure is as shown in the attached screenshots:
cms-web.png
cms-web-assets.png
The contao manager php in the /cms/web subfolder was found correctly by accessing the website as described in the first post.

(I also still have to figure out how to align the access rights of the froxlor created user and www-data. But that's a different story. )

[xchs]

What does this folder icon with the question mark mean? Are these folders symlinked somewhere?

[DZoom]

What does this folder icon with the question mark mean? Are these folders symlinked somewhere?

No, they are jsut not opened in filezilla. So: meaningless.

I just searched through the directories, there is no install, install.php or install* file in a contao subfolder.

[xchs]

contao/install (Contao install tool) and contao/login (Contao back end) are so called routes not physical paths or files.

[Spooky]

What kind of webserver are you using? If you are using Apache, you need to make sure that .htaccess files are processed.

[tab]

What about mod_rewrite? Available or not? If not, try if you can access the Install-Tool via http://yourdomain.tld/app.php/contao/install. If you don't have mod_rewrite active you need to include app.php in the URL.