error: open_basedir restriction ????

Anon

Hi,

all of a sudden, my website doesn´t work. I´m getting this error:

Warning: open_basedir restriction in effect. File is in wrong directory.

Anyone know what that means?
I´m trying to "require" a file from a directory one up the folder tree
(like require("../dir/file.inc") ). Is that a problem? I´m sure it worked fine just yesterday, when I uploaded and tested everything...
Did my hosting company change any server/php settings by any chance? Getting files from the same dir or below is still working.

I´m lost!

Jan Wilkening

Anon

The problem is that directive
"open_basedir ." has been established on your ISP. This is a security measure to restrict the access of each client to the files of another in some directory other than yours. I mean, if you tried to access to a competence directory (probably something like "require ../competence_company/index.html", probably yesterday you could, so now nobody except you is able to access your files and change (indirectly) yor code or files.

Jan Wilkening wrote:

Hi,

all of a sudden, my website doesn´t work. I´m getting this error:

Warning: open_basedir restriction in effect. File is in wrong directory.

I´m lost!

Jan Wilkening

Anon

Hi,

that´s what I thought myself after sitting for a minute 🙂, so this confirms it, thanks!

Anyway, to me it doesn´t make a lot of sense to protect me from myself... I only wanted to call a file from my own space, not any directory above my webroot. So, can we put this down to... insufficient planning... on my ISP´s part?
Of course, they didn´t respond to my support request. It seems like anything apart from "I´ve lost my password!" doesn´t have a very good chance to be solved there! This pretty much confirms my decision to move.

BTW, for now, I found a workaround in using symbolic links.

Cheers,
Jan

Anon

Hi!

i hate to interrupt, but i'm getting the same thing when including ('include("something.inc")😉 a file in the same dir???

Anon

Hi!

Sorry, I can't help you on this one (I didn't even REALLY solve my own problem). All I can think of for you to do is contact your support and hope they're a little moer co-operative than at my ISP... Making it impossible for a script to include a file from the same directory sounds like a misconfiguration to me.

Apart from that... Hmm, I'm not very good with PHP (yet, I hope 🙂, so I don't know the exact syntax of "include", but isn't it possible to include a file via http, too? I'm not sure, but it may work. --> include("http://yourdomain.com/yourfile.inc");

To be sure, I just looked it up:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/manual/features.remote-files.php

Should work I think...

Cheers,
Jan

Anon

No. That isn't the correct syntax for include.

include("file.inc");

or include("/home/webusr/www/include/file.inc");

Something stipulating a "physical" path to the file.

Anon

Usually a problem like this is caused by the php engine or compiler on the server, running in safe mode. Most cases (9 out of 10) it's because of this. My advise is to add this to the top of your php script:

#!/usr/bin/php

and rename the .php file to .cgi

it's slower but it works 100% of the time.

Hope this helps, email me if it doesn't.

-+=Guru

Anon

I tried your code, but it didtn't work
after I changed .php to .cgi, the page shows the source code not the executable html codes.

please advice

ronnieutd

Hi Jan,

I realize your post was over a year ago, but I thought I\'d reply with what I\'m doing to workaround this problem because my solution might help people who continue to struggle with safe mode.... Anyways, your same problem happened to me when my web host just turned on safe mode.

I couldn\'t even simply include or require files in the current directory with:

include(\"file.inc\");
or
include(\"./file.inc\");

But, after trial and error, I found that doing:

include(\"$DOCUMENT_ROOT/file.inc\");

Would NOT work, but:

include($DOCUMENT_ROOT . \"/file.inc\");

would.

So, I wrote a small function that I call from the header of my scripts now that makes it easy:

function inc($f) {
global $DOCUMENT_ROOT;
include($DOCUMENT_ROOT . \"$f\");
}

then I just include files by calling inc() and passing it the path from my document root (with starting slash).

inc(\"/some/deep/file.inc\");

So, no need to mess with \"./\" or \".\" or \"../\" etc.

It\'s simple, but I hope it helps someone!

Ronnie T. Moore
http://www.ronniemoore.com