Why aren´t I allowed to include() file?

Anon

Hi,

I want to include a textfile. That´s all, straightforward...
Problem is, I´m not allowed to include files from directories above the one the script is in! On my little server at home it works, on the "real" one it doesn´t. Funny, though, it did work for one night, right after I uploaded everything for the first time! Next morning it was gone.

Any ideas or workarounds? I tried absolute and relative paths. I wouldnn´t like to use the http way, since the idea was to make the thing re-usable.

Cheers
Jan

Anon

Permissions, perhaps? How did you upload the file to the
'upper' directory? Are you certain it was with the same
userid as the webserver is running?

Anon

Excuse my ignorance, how do I find out the userid of my webserver?
I uploaded all files with FTP - the files in the same flder or below are no problem, though.
Chaning permissions didn´t help.

I forgot to mention the error message I get:
Warning: open_basedir restriction in effect. File is in wrong directory.

Thanks!
Jan

Anon

I forgot to mention...

Oh. The dreaded "oh, yeah" syndrome. :-)

the error message I get: Warning: open_basedir restriction

There's your answer. Gotta turn that off in your .ini file.

I assume this is a hosted server rather than a dedicated one
"owned" by you, right? You will probably have to take it
up with your site admin, then. It sounds like it's misconfigured
to me--that is, if you have access via FTP to higher-level
directories, then there's no logical reason for forbidding your
own php programs from accessing them.

In other words, on a typical apache site with multiple virtual sites,
your directory structure may look like this:

/home/yourname
/home/yourname/public_html

The first is the root of the tree that belongs to you; the
second is apache's DOCUMENT_ROOT for your virtual site.
There is no reason for open_basedir to be set to either
'/home/yourname/public_html' or '.' (which gives the same
effect) as that ends up protecting you against yourself.

Setting it to '/home/yourname' is all that is needed to
protect others from you.