WordPress MU

I had setup a MU site a few months ago, and added about 3 blogs (virtual subdomain) with no actual content just to test it out, thinking I'd wait for wp3.0 before I really went to work on it.

So I downloaded the wp3.0 RC1 today, and figured the best way to do this was completely delete wpmu from the server and then make a fresh install of wp3.0. Used FTP (Filezilla) to delete all wp folders/files, managed to zap everything except /wp-content/blogs.dir. Now I can't open or change permissions on blogs.dir. When I try to open it, I get an error:
550 blogs.dir: No such file or directory
Failed to retrieve directory listing

I'm stumped. Is it really there or not? Is the next step just to contact hosting support and ask them to delete it (assuming they can) or is there something I can do?

That's definitely a server issue. Probably the ownership of the folder changed.

Also, why did you wipe out the old install? The auto-upgrade is in testing mode right now.
http://wpmututorials.com/how-to/testing-the-automatic-upgrade-to-wordpress-3-0/

And if you're installing 3.0 you need to enable the network.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network

I guess the reason I went to wipe and do a fresh install was (aside from not knowing about the auto-upgrade) because I've been trained that way by MS? Every windows upgrade breaks something, etc. I'm not used to software that actually works as advertised! I also don't entirely trust beta/rc/test software - there's a reason it's labeled beta/rc/test, after all! ;)
Also it was wpmu that I was replacing with wp3.0 and I'm not clear on whether there are significant differences or not. In any case, a fresh install is always the safest, and should have been totally straight forward. Additionally, I doubt the auto-upgrade would have fixed whatever is wrong with blogs.dir anyway, at best it possibly would have just kept the problem hidden, if it didn't choke on it during the upgrade.

And yes, in order to install wpmu I had to go through all of the process listed in the Create A Network link, so the server is already set up correctly for wp3.0, and that still doesn't explain/fix the problem.

Anyway, thanks andrea, I'll email my hosting provider about this. :)

This does lead to the question if the ownership of the folder has changed, how did that happen and how to prevent it from happening again?

If you unpacked a zip on the server and were logged in as root, those files / folders may have a different owner.

And yes, the auto-upgrade, if it has enough going on to actually exucute, may have been able to manage.

I had unzipped locally and then just uploaded the files. I still don't understand how ownership changed.

Anyway, I wrote hosting support about the problem, and they were able to put a fix in place:

<blockquote>When you do manually upload like using ftp. You will simply own those files as owned by your ftp user. When the server's content management system uploads something for you, you have used a component or module to browse to a file on your computer and hit a button to upload, and that is being done by php/apache and those files get created as the owner of the process that created them. The owner and group in this case is apparently apache.apache.

To prevent this kind issue on the future, we've set suPHP module under
your domain. So that if server's content management system uploads
something for you, the files and folders will be owned as your FTP users.</blockquote>

<em>Not sure how to mark the thread "resolved"</em> :)

I have this same issue with pair, when I do a blow out, I just delete it's contents and everything seems to work OK?

Doesn't sound like the same issue dwarfsibling - the issue was that I couldn't even open the folder in the first place, so no way I could delete the contents.

...and what do you mean by "pair" or did I miss something?

Hello,

I'm having a similar issue - I can access the directory through FTP - but I cannot access any of the files in Wordpress or on the internet. This has happened with every site that I did the automatic upgrade on to 3.0?

I tried creating a new blogs.dir directory - and moving everything there - but that didn't help.

Anybody?

Check the folder permissions and ownership. If you're not sure how to do that, your webhost support can fix it.

Yes - I checked that - and don't have access to check ownership.

Tracking this with you in the wordpress forum! I believe that the issue is somehow related to the images not showing up.

Thanks! :)

Update - still locked out

If I put the file in the blogs.dir directory without any subdirectories then the file is accessible.

See here: http://hanover4square.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/4sqlogo.jpg

It is still fine here: http://hanover4square.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/4sqlogo.jpg

But if I move the same file to the files sub-directory within blogs.dir it is not accessible?

See here: http://hanover4square.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/4sqlogo.jpg

But if I create a sub-directory called file1 the file is accessible?

See here: http://hanover4square.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/file1/4sqlogo.jpg

To magically redirect it would be: http://hanover4square.org/files/4sqlogo.jpg

But that returns a 404 too.

Please advise.

Like the other thread asked, your htaccess file controls this. It may be skipping that line for some reason.

Hi memitch08,
I should have clarified that my hosting provider put a file called suPHP (more info at: http://www.suphp.org/Home.html ) into my root httpdocs folder. They also deleted the offending folder for me, as I asked them to. The file suPHP will prevent this problem from occurring in the future.

I'd plug my hosting provider here, but I'm sure that's not kosher ;) I love them though! I've used many (at least a dozen) different hosts over the years - GoDaddy being only the second-worst :P - and after hosting with these guys for a couple of years, I'm well satisfied! I've never had support that immediately understands the problem and provides a fix so politely, quickly and hassle free. I've leaned on them alot and my own skills and understanding have improved greatly thanks to their generous and intelligent support. I'm rambling, sorry... :x

memitch08 fixed his issue in another thread.