Help?!? LSWS no longer recognizing any of my folders as present?

[jdash]

I have several different domains served up on my server by lsws went to the control panel to add another added to the PHP Virtual Host Template went to Instantiate and it kept telling me the folder was not valid for the host root. After trying several times deleting, re-adding, etc. I went and clicked over to one of my existing domains and this is the error I am getting on every single one of them:

/home/username/sites/domain.com/config/domain.com.xml is not a valid file.

I checked the server settings still configured to use the www-data user group which the entire "sites" folder is configured under, I haven't changed anything with these folders, but all of a sudden they are "invisible" to LSWS.

Help greatly appreciated!

[auser]

are you using latest 4.0.10?

[xendex]

Yes, I have the same problem with 4.0.10. I think that this happens due to AdminWebConsole suexec mode - so AWC cannot access vhost configuration files that are outside SERVER_ROOT, though server process can read them fine.
Here is what admin console error.log is showing:

2009-08-26 14:22:02.634 [NOTICE] [MY_IP_ADDRESS:3730-3#_AdminVHost] [STDERR] PHP Warning:  is_file() [<a href='function.is-file'>function.is-file</a>]: Stat failed for /[path to con-file outside server root]/conf.xml (errno=13 - Permission denied) in /usr/local/lsws/admin/html.4.0.10/classes/XmlTreeBuilder.php on line 13
2009-08-26 14:22:02.647 [NOTICE] [MY_IP_ADDRESS:3730-3#_AdminVHost] [STDERR] /[path to con-file outside server root]/conf.xml is not a valid file.

Sounds like a bug...

[jdash]

Yes, I am using 4.0.10, in fact I redownloaded it from here and ran a manual upgrade just to make sure (all before I posted here)

[jdash]

I pulled up my error log getting the same thing:

2009-08-26 00:17:41.862 [NOTICE] [ipaddress-3#_AdminVHost] [STDERR] PHP Warning:  is_file() [<a href='function.is-file'>function.is-file</a>]: Stat failed for /**path to config**/config/domain.com.xml (errno=13 - Permission denied) in /usr/local/lsws/admin/html.4.0.10/classes/XmlTreeBuilder.php on line 13
2009-08-26 00:17:41.862 [NOTICE] [ipaddress-3#_AdminVHost] [STDERR] /**path to config**/config/domain.com.xml is not a valid file.

[mistwang]

You need to update the file ownership and permission as the admin console is running in suEXEC mode with 4.0.10.

make the configuration file owned by "lsadm" and make sure lsadm user/group can access the directory holding the configuration file.

[xendex]

Thanks, mistwang, that solves the problem.
Just note, that it's needed to change owner(to lsadm) not only for the conf-file, but also for the destination folder that cantains this file.

[jdash]

Any security reason not to just add the lsadm user to the www-data group? That fixes the issue as well.

[mistwang]

Yes, you can do that.
You still need to change the owner of configuration files to lsadm, otherwise, it cannot be changed via web console.

The purpose of this is to prevent the user/group that lshttpd run as to access any configuration file, only the web console can.

[raphidae]

How do I disable this or downgrade? My file permissions are just fine as-is.

Also, I would like to ask you to properly document such changes in the version history, because for me 'changing the admin to suExec' does not mean add a new user and require changing the file permissions on a zillion vhosts.

Thanks.