LINUX - Plugins won't appear

Ok.. new to Elgg. My current LINUX install works great (1.8), but despite all of the reading I have done on how to install plugins in Elgg something is wrong. After placing any Plugin in the "mod" folder I expect to see the Plugin to appear in the Plugin administrator. But its not there. On a Windows install this works. So is it just Linux? I thought it might be a permission issue, and it still might be, but here is what I have verified:

  • In the httpd.conf file the DocumentRoot "/var/www/html" has AllowOverride set to "All".
  • I have executed chown -R apache.apache /var/www/html/elgg.
  • All of the folders are set to 777.

I even downloaded the system diagnostics report and sure enough the plugin appears in the list of installed files and checksums. My install paths are:

  • Full path of elgg installation: /home/dahanson/var/www/html/elgg/
  • Full path of data directory: /home/dahanson/home/data/

I've read everything I can find and tried everything I have read, but the plugins will not appear.

Any ideas???

  • Do the plugins bundled with Elgg show up?

    I'm not sure about the Apache username / group. Are you sure it's apache:apache. In my Linux system it's wwwrun:www.

    It could be problematic to set permissions to 777. If the data is accessible from remote, it's a hugh security issue. Even if not it might even be a reason for your issue as depending on your server config, the access could be blocked just to prevent of the data getting exposed.

    I would suggest to find out about the owner name / group name of Apache on your server and set it accordingly for your plugins files and directories. Also, you should not need to change the permissions when the owner name / group name are correct. When you unzip the Elgg archive, you will see the correct permissions for files and directories. Just set it the same for your 3rd party plugins - or leave them unchanged as the are correct normally.

  • apache:apache snds like rhel/centos bases. you may be under selinux. the chmod prob shud be 755 or 644, *not 777. if 'plugins will not appear..' apache cannot 'see' the mod/ folder.

  • Here're my configs (Apache/Debian)

    httpd.conf

    NameVirtualHost 10.000.00.000

    <VirtualHost www.my-cool-site.com&gt;
    ServerAdmin web@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/www
    ServerName www.my-cool-site.com
    ServerAlias my-cool-site.com *.my-cool-site.com
    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
    </VirtualHost>

    <Directory /var/www/html/www/>
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    </Directory>


    Paths

    Elgg Core: /var/www/html/www

    Elgg Data: /var/www/html/data

     

    Permissions

    cd var/www/html

    chmod 755 -R data

    chown -R www-data:www-data data

     

     

  • mod folder is a subfolder in your Elgg installation directory (in /var/www/html/www/elgg) and not in the data directory. Have you restored the original permissions for the Elgg installation folder, too?

    Do you see the original plugins of Elgg? If yes, where you able to enable them or not?

    As regarding the owner name and group name of files: it wasn't my intention for you to change them in ANY case. First, you need to find out what they are on your installation. You might not need to change them at all (i.e. revert back your chown -R www-data:www-data data command) or you might need to change them to whatever is correct on your server.

  • Thanks for the feedback. To answer one of the posted questions, yes I am able to use the plugins bundled with Elgg. I can activate and de-activate with no issues. Initally the permissions were set to 755, but I tried 777 when no new plugins appeard that were dropped in the mod folder.

  • @Daniel Hanson

    Permissions for Elgg core (with /mod) ;) folder in path /var/www/html/www

    cd /var/www/html

    chown -R root:dahanson www

    Of course, set it under 'root' account

     

    It's work for me without any changes in Elgg core with 'chmod' option

  • I changed the permissions on the folder back to 0755. No difference.My install paths are below:

    image

     

  • So, the core plugins work but not any additional plugins you install. As there's no principle difference between how core plugins and 3rd party plugins are handled, I'm pretty sure that your problem is caused by the way how you copy the plugin folders to your /var/www/html/elgg/mod folder. I'm still thinking it's a permission issue. For some reason the plugins you add are invisible to the webserver - and therefore also to Elgg. Check owner + group + read/write/access permission of the plugin folders after you copied them in mod. Are there any differences to the folder and file permissions of core Elgg plugins?

  • I sampled the new plugin folders with the core plugin folders and the permissions appear to be the same, 0755, all with the same group and same owner.