version.php permissions changing all by themselves.

[nathangaitch]

I'm posting this as a separate message, as I realise that it is only in part related to my previous thread, and that now I have a much clearer idea of what it is that I am asking people. I also have access to any technical information that people might need in order to help me out, so here goes...

(I apologise if anyone thinks this is double-posting - I genuinely don't mean it to be - my question has changed)

Hello all, and I really hope that someone will have encountered this before, and be able to help me.

I look after a CMSMS site for a client. it doesn't get updated very often, by them or by me, and yesterday, they told me that the site was down. went to look at it, and the site was not displaying at all: the only thing on the page was this error message:

Fatal error: require(): Failed opening required '/homepages/2/d250314576/htdocs/version.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php5.5') in /homepages/2/d250314576/htdocs/include.php on line 89

I couldn't access the site itself, or the admin side of things, and I was truly stumped.

So this is where it gets really strange.

I've discovered that the thing that is making the site not show up is a permissions issue with version.php in the main directory. I looked at the permissions for it, and they were set to 200, which is only set to "write" for owner.

I changed this to 700, Read, Write and Execute, again just for owner, and the site magically popped back online.

Yes! I thought.

For about a minute and a half.

The strange part about this, is that after about one and a half minutes, something is changing the settings back to 200, and the site goes offline, only displaying the error message in my first post here.

I can change it back to 700 as many times as I like, and for a very short time I get full access to the site, and the admin site, and can do any edits I like, but after 1.5mins, it all stops working again, until I re-change the permissions back to 700.

What on earth could be causing this? It doesn't seem possible, and I'm going mad, trying to figure it out.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks again for your time and thoughts, and once again, I realise that there is a bit of copy and paste in this post from my previous thread, but I'm afraid I don't know how to link from that thread to this, or indeed from this thread to that.
Best wishes, Nathan

[JohnnyB]

If permissions are changing like that, without known human intervention, then I have to lean toward a routine from the web server.

1st thing: ask the host company why that is occurring.

You can also look at logs for any weird activity, etc.

Also, in case it is a bot, virus, or human gaining access to the server, change the FTP and the server admin passwords for all users...

Note: for a PHP 5.5 site (I'm not sure of your actual server environment), you may find that all that is needed is 0644 for files and 0755 for directories. In some cases 0700 and especially 0777 will make it writeable for all.

[nathangaitch]

Hi there, JohnnyB, and thanks for your input. I'll definitely give the host a call and ask them if they can shed light. The site is hosted with 1and1.co.uk. Perhaps someone knows of a similar problem occurring with them?

Also, thanks for the permissions advice. I don't really know what any of this stuff means, so any input is gratefully received!

Thanks again, Regards,
Nathan