Shared Hosting and Symlinks

[Inxentas]

Hello there. I have an issue with a PW installation on some crappy shared host. A few days ago the site stopped working. So I checked the error logs, which said:

Option FollowSymlinks not allowed here

And logically, PW's .htaccess file says:

Options +FollowSymLinks

So it appears that FollowSymlinks is suddenly no longer allowed on this server. I rarely have to deal with server settings, but is the impression that PW simply needs FollowSymlinks to be allowed. Is this the case? Would it be valid to state that this server isn't suitable for a PW installation anymore, because the host no longer allows SymLinks? Would that statement be correct?

I've never had the pleasure of a shared host suddenly no longer allowing SymLinks out of the blue, to be fair I am not entirely sure how those work. I can run the site on my local and test servers just fine: it's just this shared host that's been giving me grief for the last few days. The homepage could be reached but every child page just gave me a serverside 404 (not the 404 you'd expect from PW itself).

[BitPoet]

Have you tried changing FollowSymlinks to SymLinksifOwnerMatch in .htaccess (it's explained in the comments in section 1. Apache Options)? You should probably even be fine with just commenting out the line in a standard PW setup, so I'd try that first.

[Inxentas]

Yes, and that worked perfectly! Thank you @BitPoet.

I was hesitant to change the .htaccess file but truth be told, this is kind of a legacy project, so in the end I did not do much research on what that would affect. Are there any PW related issues I should take into account?

PS. I received a mail asking me to click a "mark as solution" button. I wanted to mark your reply as the solution but I'm not seeing that button. I fear I'm going blind.

[Peter Knight]

On 11/15/2022 at 8:16 AM, Inxentas said:

Yes, and that worked perfectly! Thank you @BitPoet.

I was hesitant to change the .htaccess file but truth be told, this is kind of a legacy project, so in the end I did not do much research on what that would affect. Are there any PW related issues I should take into account?

PS. I received a mail asking me to click a "mark as solution" button. I wanted to mark your reply as the solution but I'm not seeing that button. I fear I'm going blind.

Hi @Inxentas

I just experienced the same issue. Would this hosting company have a name beginning letter H ?

 

[Inxentas]

On 2/13/2024 at 11:08 AM, Peter Knight said:

Hi @Inxentas

I just experienced the same issue. Would this hosting company have a name beginning letter H ?

 

I;m sorry, this has been so long I don't remember which project this was exactly. Probably not the same hosting provider, as all the hosts our clients use are local Dutch companies. Most of them are fine but some make changes to their server structure and inform only the client... who them often neglects to inform us. Unfortunately we're not a full service internet bureau so I often find myself dealing with (surmountable) server differences. In that regard PW has been the right choice for me.