WordPress MU

I'm having a bit of a problem. I'm using this theme http://www.magznetwork.com/demo/ and in the theme they use the timthumb php script to resize images for thumbnails.
This is the URL it is trying to use for the picture:
http://tony.therustedmusket.com/wp-content/themes/indomagz_2/thumb.php?src=http://tony.therustedmusket.com/files/2008/11/512.png&w=245&h=150&zc=1&q=80

If you go to http://tony.therustedmusket.com/files/2008/11/512.png you will be able to see the picture, so why doesn't the thumbnail show up correctly? I know it makes it because I can navigate to the blog.dir folder and find it in there.

Also when I try to enter pictures in to a post the flash uploader fails with a "http error." My thought is that there is a permissions problem. So my question is should that whole folder be chmod 777? Also it appears that WP makes that folder and thus the owner shows up as 99 99, is that correct? And if I change it will it still work and not change back?

1. No way to have 777 on live website.

2. 9999 is strange, where do you see this?

run these commands from the wp-content directory:

chown nobody:nobody -R blogs.dir

if it doesn't work, try replacing the nobody(s) with the name of your web server account.

Run

dir -ls

to find out owner:group of the files before changing them.

VentureMaker: Yeah 755 is generally what you want right?
I see the 99 99 in Filezilla under Owner/Group. And I can't do anything to the folder. Should blog.dir be 755 and is it safe to have the administrator (me) as owner?
Could this all be related to the HTTP uploading error?

Any ideas on the thumbnail problems? I just find it very odd that it can't find the file even though I can enter the address in and see the file just fine. I have the standard WP .htaccess file, I haven't made any changes. Not that I could easily since that has 99 99 as the owner as well.

Yes, 755 is good to go.

Regarding owner - yes, set yourself as owner.

Okay, I got my host to change all the blog.dir folders and files to me, which is theruste
Now when I try to upload a files using the html uploader it says it can't move the file to the folder unless I change the permissions to 777, which I don't want to do obviously. Also the flash uploader still isn't working and neither is the timthumb script. Any more ideas?

Do you try to upload a file using WPMU http uploader, or uploader of some plugin like NextGen gallery?

Using the WPMU uploader only. Is there some way I can change it so that it uses my username to upload? When I changed the folder to 777 the uploader works but then it uploads the files as the 99 99 user/group again.

Try this:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/image-upload-http-error-fix/

If you're looking for something more comprehensive - give these a try:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-easy-uploader/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flexible-upload/

Okay I'll look at those. Any ideas on the thumbnail script though?

I don't like this:

// set document root
$doc_root = get_document_root($src);

// get path to image on file system
$src = $doc_root . '/' . $src;

cause in case of WPMU you have to edit these values

What do you mean?

Okay I see what you mean. I ended up being able to figure it out, well sort of. I had to change a ling from
<?php $image = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'Image URL', true); ?>
to
<?php $image = 'http://tony.therustedmusket.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/3/' . get_post_meta($post->ID, 'Image URL', true); ?>

And then change the way the image was put into the custom field from http://tony.therustedmusket.com/files/2008/11/dp-450s-08.jpg to files/2008/11/dp-450s-08.jpg

So not too big of a deal...

So, did it finally work on your end? :)

Yes it did. Just not how it was originally intended to work. But such is the life of a WPMU user... At least it works and it seems to work well... Now onto the rest of the fun stuff... :)
Thanks for your help!

I am using Mimbo, had the same Problem and your comments helped me.
I changed the following in /mimbo/scripts/timtthumb.php:

define( 'SHORTINIT', true );
require_once( '../../../../wp-load.php' );

$doc_root = "../../../blogs.dir/" . $current_site->blog_id ;

So it should use the correct files-Directory.

I have the same problem with Owner/Group being 99 99 as my default user is "nobody" and I am neither able to change the chmode nor to simply backup my data via FileZilla.

Of course, there are solutions mentioned above and I am very grateful.
However,can anybody explain "how" to set "nobody" to "my_domain" without using "techno - bubble" only? (Examples would be really helpful!)

I am new to all this and would really appreciate a step - by -step guide of how to change the Owner/Group of e.g. wp-content.

Very many thanks!

Can you login as "root" anywhere?