solved Smarty permissions errors (randomly compiles as 'root')

[remifr]

Hi,

I'm asking for help cause I'm out of ideas.

Since December 2021, my Prestashop 1.6.1.9 started to crash and return blank pages until the website was not responding at all.

I found out that there are new folders created in /cache/smarty/compile & /cache/smarty/cache, as 'root' user instead of 'www-data' (or other apache's user).

After I empty the cache (file system) I get this :
 

Quote

 AH01071: Got error 'PHP message: PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught UnexpectedValueException: RecursiveDirectoryIterator::__construct(/var/www/web/cache/smarty/compile/f4/1d): failed to open dir: Permission denied in /var/www/clients/client1/web1/web/tools/smarty/sysplugins/smarty_internal_utility.php:242\nStack trace:\n#0 [internal function]: RecursiveDirectoryIterator->__construct('/var/www/client...', 0)\n#1 /var/www/web/tools/smarty/sysplugins/smarty_internal_utility.php(242): RecursiveDirectoryIterator->getChildren()\n#2 /var/www/web/tools/smarty/Smarty.class.php(1469): Smarty_Internal_Utility::clearCompiledTemplate(NULL, NULL, NULL, Object(SmartyCustom))\n#3 /var/www/web/classes/SmartyCustom.php(99): Smarty->clearCompiledTemplate()\n#4 /var/www/web/classes/SmartyCustom.php(118): SmartyCustomCore->check_compile_cache_invalidation()\n#5 /var/www/web/classes/module/Module.php(2335): SmartyCustomCore->createTempla...\n', referer: https://www.mywebsite.com/admin5/index.php?controller=AdminPerformance&token=f5e91b242b6fecab23fb7e370bf1&conf=4

This folder has 0 as owner (root) : www/web/cache/smarty/compile/f4/1d

My only 2 temporary solutions for this is to "chown -R www-data:www-data" all the time on /cache & /compile Smarty folders
And the other solution is SQL cache instead of filesystem cache, but after a couple of days, the db is too big and I need to manually empty the cache or the site will be too slow to load

[remifr]

I may have found something, related to a module that needs a CRON job.

I was executing this cron from the root "crontab -e", when I moved the line to a regular user's crontab, the new folders were created with that username, so I ran :

crontab -u www-data -e

now, i'll wait for some days to see if the problem occurs again

[acastanon]

The same thing happens to us, but always with two directories inside /cache/prod/smarty/compile
Have you found the cause of your problem?

[remifr]

Solution in the reply above (cron)

 

On 12/30/2022 at 4:39 PM, acastanon said:

The same thing happens to us, but always with two directories inside /cache/prod/smarty/compile
Have you found the cause of your problem?

 

[alcor]

On 3/1/2022 at 9:00 AM, remifr said:

I may have found something, related to a module that needs a CRON job.

I was executing this cron from the root "crontab -e", when I moved the line to a regular user's crontab, the new folders were created with that username, so I ran :

crontab -u www-data -e

now, i'll wait for some days to see if the problem occurs again

I have Plesk and facing this problem in the last days... I can't find in the cronjobs anything like -e but I am quite sure is related to that, as the folders are "recreated" with permissions/owner e (0771) at a same time. I have no idea where to start from...

[remifr]

-e is to edit the crontab, -u <user>

so you have to search in your root's crontab if there is a line that is supposed to be ran by apache then move it to your apache user's crontab