XF 2.2 Couple of awkward problems I'm stuck on

[FTL]

I'm still soldiering on with my forum project and haven't gone live with it yet as I want to do it properly, have a big learning curve and little time.

Apologies if these have been answered before, but frantic Googling, looking on here and the manual didn't reveal the answer to me.

XF is installed on Windows Server 2019 build 1809 (Amazon Web Services image) with all the latest patches. It's running on IIS. I'm using this rather than Apache on Linux to avoid a big command line learning curve, which I simply don't have time for and for easy updating of patches.

1. The one click upgrade on 2.2.4 to 2.2.5 aborts with error, "The following issue was found when determining if a one-click upgrade is possible: The files are not writable". It's not clear to me which files and folders to make writeable. Looking at the folder structure in the installation, they seem to have the right permissions as far as I can see, so I'm stuck. Also, I should add that the test copy installed on my local W10 PC upgraded without a hitch.

2. I've upgraded from PHP 8.0.2 to 8.0.6, but XF is still showing that it's using 8.0.2 in the ACP. How do I switch it to the latest version?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Paul B]

You will need to ensure the IIS user has full permissions.

A server restart may be required to serve the new PHP version.

 

[FTL]

Ok, I'll check, but do you know the answer to the first question though?

 

[Paul B]

It will be due to file/user permissions and/or ownership.

 

[FTL]

I know that. It's the specifics I need. Perhaps one of the developers will be able to come on here and answer these questions.

 

[Paul B]

It's not an XF issue, it's a server configuration issue.

If you don't know how to set the permissions and ownership then you can contact your host.

 

[FTL]

I know how to set Windows permissions and pretty familiar with the ins and outs of them. There's just something a little funny going on here that I need a bit of help with. I normally solve all my own problems and rarely ask for help on forums, I normally give the help, but this these two issues have got me stumped.

Contacting the host (AWS) isn't appropriate here. It's simply a virtual machine running a copy of Windows, as I explained in my OP. It's directly equivalent to installing it on my own PC at home in how it functions, with a standard desktop etc.

I'm having a problem, because the server OS is somehow configured a little differently than the client W10 in this respect. There are lots of differences in fact, with the server OS generally being more restrictive. Maybe it's something to do with Group Policy, I don't know. When I compared the file and folder permissions between Server and W10, they looked the same, which is the puzzler.

That error message from XF is too vague to narrow it down, so I hoped someone here would know where the problem is. I could mess around with giving the Everyone group full access to the installation folder (the widest possible permission) and see if that fixes it, but that's not a good approach, for security especially and won't really tell me where the problem was. I need to zero in on it.

I might have to resort to a manual update if I can't solve this and if that fails too, then I can't go live with a forum that I can't update, obviously. It has the potential to be a showstopper.

Do you know the answer to my second question? At least this one isn't a showstopper.

 

[Paul B]

When I have installed XF on an IIS server in the past it has been necessary to give the IUSR_ xxx or IWPG_xxx user Full Control in Windows.

It may be necessary to go to the advanced screen and add another entry, not inherited.

 

[FTL]

Thanks, I'll have a look.

And sorry, I missed what you said about restarting the server for the PHP fix. I already did that, but no difference. I have a feeling I'm missing something basic here, lol.

 

[FTL]

@Mike would you please be able to answer my questions?

 

[Mike]

In terms of the one-click update message: this isn't really trying to prompt you to change permissions or your server config. It's really meant to tell you that you can't continue with the one-click approach and should do a "traditional" upgrade. (The wording could be better.)

Ultimately, all we're doing (via PHP) is asking if the we can write to some specific files and the OS is returning that it can't, so it will come down to file system permissions. Unfortunately, I can't really give any further suggestions than have already been given, so you may need to try "Everyone" (which is presumably essentially equivalent to a 0777 chmod and this would be the most likely way to resolve this message on Linux, given a similar setup (non cPanel/suPHP)).

In terms of the PHP version, it's simply reporting what's coming from PHP. There might be further changes that you need to make in IIS to point to a different PHP version. This is outside the scope of what we can really comment on as I'm far from an expert on IIS and PHP configuration. (Very few of our customers run production installs on Windows; I can't recall the last time I ran into one.)

 

[FTL]

ok thanks Mike, very helpful.

I'll try the Everyone permission approach now and see how it goes. I can always remove it afterwards, because I can simply add it without removing the other permissions. Would still be nice to get to the bottom of it one day, though.

Re PHP, yeah, it's registered in IIS and it's switched to it in PHP Manager (this is a plug-in), so I don't know, either. It does sound like there might be extra IIS configuration to do. At least I know where to look now, so will investigate.

Finally, I agree that it would be better to use Linux and Apache for my website (or at least Windows and Apache) but learning all that command line stuff now isn't too practical for me, as I mentioned in my OP, so this will have to do.