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Hi all,

Can anybody help me please, with a niggling problem I keep encountering. I have a local installation of Joomla! with the following setup:

Database Version:  4.0.20a-nt 
PHP Version:  4.3.8 
Web Server:  Microsoft-IIS/5.1 
WebServer to PHP interface:  isapi 
Joomla! Version:  Joomla! 1.0.11 Stable [ Sunbow ] 28 August 2006 20:00 UTC 
User Agent:  Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1

and with the following php settings:

Joomla! Register Globals Emulation:  OFF   
Register Globals:  OFF   
Magic Quotes:  ON   
Safe Mode:  OFF   
File Uploads:  ON   
Session auto start:  OFF   
Session save path:  c:\temp_sessions 
Short Open Tags:  ON 
Output Buffering:  OFF 
Open basedir:  none 
Display Errors:  ON 
XML enabled:  Yes 
Zlib enabled:  Yes 
Disabled Functions:  none 

and a config file with the following settings:

Configuration File:  $mosConfig_offline = '0';
$mosConfig_host = 'xxxxxx'
$mosConfig_user = 'xxxxxx'
$mosConfig_password = 'xxxxxx'
$mosConfig_db = 'xxxxxx'
$mosConfig_dbprefix = 'jos_';
$mosConfig_lang = 'english';
$mosConfig_absolute_path = 'c:\inetpub\wwwroot\joomla100';
$mosConfig_live_site = 'http://localhost/joomla100';
$mosConfig_sitename = 'Joomla100';
$mosConfig_shownoauth = '0';
$mosConfig_user = 'xxxxxx'
$mosConfig_uniquemail = '1';
$mosConfig_offline_message = 'This site is down for maintenance.
Please check back again soon.';
$mosConfig_error_message = 'This site is temporarily unavailable.
Please notify the System Administrator';
$mosConfig_debug = '0';
$mosConfig_lifetime = '900';
$mosConfig_session_life_admin = '1800';
$mosConfig_session_type = '0';
$mosConfig_MetaDesc = 'Joomla - the dynamic portal engine and content management system';
$mosConfig_MetaKeys = 'Joomla, joomla';
$mosConfig_MetaTitle = '1';
$mosConfig_MetaAuthor = '1';
$mosConfig_locale = 'en_GB';
$mosConfig_offset = '0';
$mosConfig_offset_user = '0';
$mosConfig_hideAuthor = '0';
$mosConfig_hideCreateDate = '0';
$mosConfig_hideModifyDate = '0';
$mosConfig_hidePdf = '0';
$mosConfig_hidePrint = '0';
$mosConfig_hideEmail = '0';
$mosConfig_enable_log_items = '0';
$mosConfig_enable_log_searches = '0';
$mosConfig_enable_stats = '0';
$mosConfig_sef = '0';
$mosConfig_vote = '0';
$mosConfig_gzip = '0';
$mosConfig_multipage_toc = '1';
$mosConfig_allowUserRegistration = '1';
$mosConfig_link_titles = '0';
$mosConfig_error_reporting = -1;
$mosConfig_list_limit = '30';
$mosConfig_caching = '0';
$mosConfig_cachepath = 'c:\inetpub\wwwroot\joomla100/cache';
$mosConfig_cachetime = '900';
$mosConfig_mailer = 'mail';
$mosConfig_mailfrom = '[email protected]';
$mosConfig_fromname = 'Joomla100';
$mosConfig_sendmail = '/usr/sbin/sendmail';
$mosConfig_smtpauth = '0';
$mosConfig_smtpuser = '';
$mosConfig_smtppass = '';
$mosConfig_smtphost = 'localhost';
$mosConfig_back_button = '1';
$mosConfig_item_navigation = '1';
$mosConfig_secret = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx';
$mosConfig_pagetitles = '1';
$mosConfig_readmore = '1';
$mosConfig_hits = '1';
$mosConfig_icons = '1';
$mosConfig_favicon = 'favicon.ico';
$mosConfig_fileperms = '';
$mosConfig_dirperms = '';
$mosConfig_helpurl = 'http://help.joomla.org';
$mosConfig_mbf_content = '0';
$mosConfig_editor = 'tinymce';
$mosConfig_admin_expired = '1';
$mosConfig_frontend_login = '1';
$mosConfig_frontend_userparams = '1';
setlocale (LC_TIME, $mosConfig_locale);
?> 

Now whenever I try to change anything in the global configuration settings via the admin control panel, it doesnt work and the settings remain as before. Also i have tried disabling my firewall and on doing so i notice an error message appear which doesnt when the firewall is turned on. The error message is:
"An error has occurred. Unable to open config file"

What gives?

Finally i have another question with regards to one of the lines in my configuration.php file which is bolded out above $mosConfig_cachepath = 'c:\inetpub\wwwroot\joomla100/cache';
Is this correct because as far as i can tell the backslash before cache is incorrect?. I changed it the other way round but this did not help with the error message above although what it did do was clear the users online icon at the top of Joomla! Admin Control Panel which had been previuosly annoying me.

Any ideas would be welcome as i am a newbie to Joomla!.

Regards

Mighty mightily odd!

I messed about with the write permissions for the default web folder and hey presto it all worked again fine. I did this by going into Internet Information Server (Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Internet Information Services), and then right clicking the default web folder and clicking on properties. Then i enabled the write checkbox for the default web folder (in essence making everything under this folder write-enabled), restarted the web server (Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Services...World Wide Web Publishing and then restart) and i was able to then write to the configuraton.php file. Hip hip hoooray!.
Then because i didnt think that leaving this with the write permissions enabled was a good idea I changed it back and of course it stopped working again....bollox 
But after a few PC reboots and some more of the same, I am now able to change the Site Settings via the global configuration workspace in Joomla! (it now writes to the configuration.php file all ok) WITHOUT leaving the write checkbox enabled on the default web folder. 

So now i am left thinking that the action of enabling write privileges actually had nothing to do with the problem but in fact it was the web server restarts and constant rebooting that sorted out this problem??...this is extremely head-phucky though cos i dont understand WHY?. Perhaps there was a cacheing issue as well that may have influenced the weird behaviour?

Anyway it all works fine now, so thats what matters 

problem happened again today??...now i cant get it to work again?

Something is not quite right. Why can i not write to the configuration.php file?

PLEASE SOMEBODY HELP!!!!!

After hours battling this problem and a few war cries later, I think i may have cracked this one..at least for now!

After messing with varied combinations of permission settings in IIS to no avail, ie. allowing write access to the Default Web Folder as well as creating and modifying Access Control Lists and Local User and Group settings (btw as a sidenote: a quick way to get at that is by keying in: rundll32.exe netplwiz.dll,UsersRunDll in Start>Run...), I have since found that by doing the following I am able to have the best of both worlds; where i can access my joomla folder with write access to the configuration.php file, as well as still be able to use the localhost server anonymously as before.

This is what i did:

1. disabled anonymous access to the Joomla100 folder under c:\inetpub\wwwroot completely, (by going to Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Internet Information Services>Default Web Site>Joomla100...and then right clicking for properties and going into Directory Structure Tab...then edit under Anonymous Access and authentication control setting...uncheck anonymous access)
2. left anonymous access enabled on the Default Web Folder as it had been before (same instructions as above just on the parent folder named Default Web Site)

So now I am able to make changes to the configuration.php file in joomla! by going through the admin control panel and now i can see the  Make unwriteable after saving checkbox when i go to global configuration which i never had before.

Also this stays working when i switch off and back on again... so far!

My final question now is how safe this is...so, does anybody know if by disabling anonymous access on a folder in the web directory of a local machine using Windows XP Pro (i.e. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\joomla100), I am making myself more vulnerable or not?

Regards,
Lee

On your Windows webserver - right click on the configuration.php file and assign write permissions to the IUSR_WEBSERVER account for that file ( assuming of course that you're using NTFS). Make your changes to the configuration.php file in Joomla or directly in the file itself - save and then go and remove write permissions from that user account.