Thanks for your timely response Paul,, it is greatly appreciated.

Per your request, I have granted -R 777 permissions to the /dev directory so you can take another look.

Please go ahead and let us know your findings,

Regards,

Richard - Server Admin
Syed - Project lead

Hi Syed,

I have spent a lot of time on this today and i can confirm the problem is the configuration of the server. I created a folder in the dev directory call /paul. uploaded and installed joomla. During this install there were numerous permissions errors (see attached screen shot), The server is defaulting the permissions incorrectly. When i change the /paul directory to 755, which is what it should be the joomla install ran but the folder permissions were wrong. This stopped Joomla writing the config file which had to be added manually. Joomla then ran ok

When i uploaded jomsocial to install, the sever then set the packages permissions wrong i then reset the permissions and had to set the directories to 777 as the ownership of the directories is not correct. The uploader is not the owner meaning the files cant be unpacked or directories created because of this. So i set the /paul directory to 777 recursive then jomsocial installed. Once it finished because of the permissions problems there are jomsocial zip files that the install should have unpacked but couldn't because the permissions are wrong on the new directories created during the install.

I then created a complete working site of joomla and jomsocial on my own localhost and copied it to your localhost but unpacking was not possible as the directory creation has incorrect permissions.

I would really recommend either getting someone to setup the localhost for you correctly or sign up for some hosting. Some are as low as $5 a month, you will then be able to enjoy using your site instead of configuring the sever.

Thanks again Paul,

We are using vsftpd for the ftp server and it is set to change upload permissions to the local (Ubuntu installer) user. I can comment out that line in the config file so you can try again if you like.

Here are a few things I would like to point out.

1) The first JomSocial install was done on the localhost and the installation was done by the Ubuntu installer account, no ftp involved. The installer was run at the local Server desktop.

2) During the install, the pre-check did show all green for us (after making the recommended tweaks to the php.ini folder)

3) We installed quite a few other extensions/templates (Kunena, Gavick, jLike-it, etc) all with no issues. We never encountered any issues until we installed the JomSocial extension, which is OK on the front-end but killed the back-end access.

4) Please note that our /var/www directory (apache root) is owned by user www-data.

We really do prefer the JomSocial Option over the next nearest alternative and would really like to get this going so we can get additional required resources.

In light of this please advise a recommended localhost setup so we can start clean and try to get this JomSocial working with our Joomla back-end intact.

Thanks and Regards,

Richard & Syed

Hi Syed & Richard,

Could you do the following for me in the /dev directory i have placed 2 files 1. is called kickstart.php and the second is site-localhost-20140413-014659.jpa

Can you copy those files out of the dev directory to a safe place then delete and recreate a directory called dev2 (or whatever) once you do that move the two files back into it then from the website front end run kickstart.php click continue then the next screen down the bottom is an extract button, press it and it should extract the entire site and proceed like a normal install. If it does continue all the way though.

At the moment if you press extract in the dev directory it fails with a write permission error. This site is a complete working copy of joomla and jomsocial that i created on my own local host.

Also if you have a sypye account can you email the user id to me please, then we can continue this there. The reason i am not emailing you is my replies are bouncing back. but skype will be a lot quicker

Thanks for getting back to us Paul. I will proceed as you requested tomorrow (4/15). If you reply to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. only, the mail will be delivered.
regards,

Richard / Syed

Hi syed

The refund has been processed and you should see it within the next 7 days