[Mediawiki-l] Tearing my hair out (what's left of it...)

[Jan Steinman]

I was trying to set up a number of MediaWiki 1.4 sites. I'd written a 
bash script that duplicates the folder hierarchy and creates hard links 
to the files. I then remove LocalSettings.php, and run /wiki/config.

This worked for several websites, then refused to work on one. I kept 
getting the message:
     * Script URI path: /wiki
     Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class namespace in
     /Users/xxx/Sites/yyy/wiki/includes/Namespace.php on line 52

Now the "yyy" directory, in the directory of user "xxx", was symlinked 
into /Library/WebServer, which is the standard place on MacOS X. I went 
up and down that symlinked path, looking for permission problems, and 
found none.

But the problem wasn't in the symliked path! The home directory of user 
"xxx" had somehow gotten perms of "-rwxr-x--x" -- there was no read 
permission for others, which included the user "www" that Apache runs 
under! User "xxx" and I had the same group, so I was able to go into 
the directory with no problem.

I thought it a rather strange error message for a permission problem 
several levels up!

:::: Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you 
won’t either. -- Joseph Fischer
:::: Jan Steinman <http://www.Bytesmiths.com/Van>