Internal server error ... kanboard/app/../data" must be writeable by your web server user

1

Linux Mint, Xampp installed with PHP & MariaDb. Today (Sunday 29 Dec) I downloaded the latest release (of about 2 weeks ago of Kanboard). I placed the opened folder in
htdocs/projects/
path. So it is htdocs/projects/kanboard

The browser at localhost/projects/kanban shows on the blank webpage

“Internal Error: The directory “/opt/lampp/htdocs/projects/kanboard/app/…/data” must be writeable by your web server user”

I have searched online & asked AI. There are many different, seemingly conflicting instructions. What I have checked & tried:

ls -l shows d rwx rwx r-x Kanboard These are the same settings to my own folder of a website, so seem okay.

bash sudo chown -R www-data:www-data kanboard to give ownership to the server

In /extra/httpd-ssl.conf I changed the ServerName from example.com to localhost:443

(I haven’t changed ServerAdmin it still says yourexample.com)

I have read a lot of suggestions that don’t seem to work & have consulted 2 AI helpers who are also contradictory & not very helpful.

Any ideas?

2

The complaint is about the data subdirectory (and everything below).

3

Good point.

Unfortunately I haven’t yet found the data folder.
The path seems to have a missing section. /projects/kanboard/app/…/data”

I tried:

/opt/lampp/htdocs/projects/kanboard/app $ sudo find -type d -name data

&

/opt/lampp/htdocs/projects/kanboard/app$ sudo find . -type d -name data

Neither produce any response.

So to try to locate the /data part do I have to trawl through all the possible paths?

The contents of app/ are

Action Decorator Group Notification Validator
Analytic Event Helper Pagination check_setup.php
Api EventBuilder Import Schema common.php
Auth Export Job ServiceProvider constants.php
Console ExternalLink Locale Subscriber functions.php
Controller Filter Middleware Template
Core Formatter Model User

There are 29 folders to check into.
I have checked them and found that only 6 have sub folders. These are with (number of sub folders)

api(3)
Authorization Middleware Procedure
(Checked these. data not here)

core(18)
Action Event Http ObjectStorage
ExternalLink Ldap
Cache ExternalTask Log Plugin
Controller Filter Mail Queue
Group Security User
Notification Session
(Checked these. data not here)

locale(36)
Looks like geographical/language

schema( 1)
sql
(Checked these. data not here)

template(70)
Not listing them all

user(1)
Avatar
(Checked these. data not here)

So far I can’t find any such folder

4

Wrong location, usually the data directory is one level up.
Unless you have configured in your config.php, to be elsewhere.

drwxrwxr-x 31 www-data www-data    4096 Feb  3  2024 app
drwxrwxr-x  6 www-data www-data    4096 Feb  3  2024 assets
-rwxrwxr-x  1 www-data www-data     582 Feb  3  2024 cli
-rw-rw-r--  1 www-data www-data    9938 Feb  3  2024 config.default.php
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data     450 Mar 26  2024 config.php
drwxrwxr-x  3 www-data www-data    4096 Apr 17  2024 data 
-rw-rw-r--  1 www-data www-data   13094 Feb  3  2024 favicon.ico
-rw-rw-r--  1 www-data www-data     263 Feb  3  2024 index.php
-rw-rw-r--  1 www-data www-data      78 Feb  3  2024 jsonrpc.php
drwxrwxr-x 12 www-data www-data    4096 Feb  3  2024 libs
-rw-rw-r--  1 www-data www-data    1080 Feb  3  2024 LICENSE
drwxrwxr-x  9 www-data www-data    4096 Apr 16  2024 plugins
-rw-rw-r--  1 www-data www-data      25 Feb  3  2024 robots.txt
drwxrwxr-x  8 www-data www-data    4096 Feb  3  2024 vendor
-rw-rw-r--  1 www-data www-data     793 Feb  3  2024 web.config
5

I was using the path in the error message, but yes, you are right there is a folder called data at the same level as app.

ls -l produces

drwxrwxr-x 2 www-data www-data 4096 Dec 18 21:30 data

so user & group have write but global doesn’t. I will test what happens if I make global +x

Ah, seems I have broken the server. It won’t run. It shows starting and then stopped.
I assume I made a bad mistake on the httpd.conf file.

Do I have to reinstall Xampp or can I get a new config file?

On exploring this. It seems that the problem may be because I used a text editor which has inserted something in the file. I did a hexdump and saw 0000000 bbef at line one which I read is a bad thing.

6

There is a config.sample.php you can use as a template for your new config.php. Remove everything you don’t need, update where required.

Also verify that your Apache .conf file points at the correct location.

7

Bad idea and completely dangerous.

8

Thank you for your help. I didn’t know for sure what I had messed-up so I have gone back to the time before downloading Kanboard.

I think it will be a while before I try anything that involves editing config files.

I would have liked to try out Kanboard because there is a chance I could make use of it, but for me it has been too hard to set-up. Other people seem to have found it more straightforward than my experience.

Again, thank you for your comments.

1 Like
9

What I do not understand: Linux Mint in based on Ubuntu, and there is a specific installation section in the docs. Why didn’t you follow this advice there? I’m certain it will work out of the box.

I have no clue about your XAMPP installation, but I know the official doc-way will work.
Furthermore, I recommend giving it a try, and selecting the Apache variant.

Good luck and don’t hesitate to come back in case of other issues.

EDIT: Added link to docs.