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Akeeba Ticket System

#19809 CRON job: unable to create directory /home/virtfs...

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Environment Information

Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Akeeba Ticket System version
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Latest post by tampe125 on Monday, 14 April 2014 07:40 CDT

UWiX
 This week I've fully installed the Akeeba Ticket System according to all the instruction from the manual - what a great component.

Also set up 2 CRON jobs and that works okay accept for the "ats-remove-attacments.php" command.
I received an e-mail with a CRON job error; it was just one line of text:
Unable to create directory: /home/virtfs/nameofmysitefolder

I've double checked all my settings in cPanel for the CRON jobs and everything is set according the instructions in the ATS manual. And only this CRON job returns the error.
I think the directory that should be created by the script has to be:
/home/nameofmysitefolder/virtfs

Or is this assumption incorrect? I will try finding the folder naming in the "ats-remove-attachments.php" source file and test what some adjustments will do with the error.
If you have any hints or tips please let me know.

Greetz, Nikolai
UWiX
--- www.uwix.nl ---

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Hello Nikolai,

I think there's an error in the command you are launching, can you please post it here?

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

UWiX
Yes, that's what I thought too, but.... I'm using the following line as the CRON job:

/usr/bin/php5-cli /home/uwixnl/public_html/cli/ats-remove-attachments.php


I've written it as described in the ATS manual; seems correct to me but it could be I'm missing something.

Thank you for your help.

Greetz, Nikolai van Nes
UWiX
--- www.uwix.nl ---

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Can you please go inside the Global Configuration and check the temp directory?
If the virtfs is not there you should ask to your host, I have a suspicion that /home/uwixnl is a symlink to /home/virtfs/uwixnl.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
We suspect you are in the following scenario:
  • CRON jobs seem to be running in a chroot jail (that's why you see /virtfs in the output)
  • your host's php.ini has an open_basedir directive
  • the open_basedir is not taking into account /virtfs

This means that CRON jobs are not able to write anything on the disk.

Can you please contact your host and ask them to verify this?

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

UWiX
Well, you've started me thinkin' ....

The other CRON Job's (autoclose-tickets) works fine so I thought I might could solve this with a simple method. Just by creating the virtfs directory myself in the /home directory with the correct folder permissions for the server. To test I've set the CRON job interval to every minute.

And guess what the e-mails for the CRON job keeps pouring in with this message:

Akeeba Ticket System -- Automatic attachment removal script Copyright 2011-2014 Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos / AkeebaBackup.com ===============================================================================
Maximum attachment age: 30
Total attachments to remove: 0
Nothing to remove


Seems to work fine now! No errors about the virtfs folder. Very strange - but it's solved.

Thank you for your help and input!

Greetz, Nikolai van Nes
UWiX
--- www.uwix.nl ---

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
You're welcome!

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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