Forbidden Error Saving Configuration

[mrmarketeer]

Howdy Yall,

I have been running 1.7.4 successfully for some time. I just upgraded to 1.8.2 and when I went to save the configuration and run diagnostics I received a Forbidden Error. This happens if I just try to save the configuration too.

Everything else appears to be running properly and the page. archives, etc.... looks fine. Any suggestions here?

[coldstone]

Can you post the error message? That doesn't sound like a Greymatter error, so I am guessing it comes from your server. I would guess a permissions error, but that is strange considering you are doing an upgrade, not a new install.

[mrmarketeer]

Coldstone, I agree. The earlier version worked fine. There is no reason the upgrade shouldn't work properly. I went through and checked all of my permissions and they seem right.

Here is the error, but it does not tell you much.

"Forbidden

You do not have permission to access this document.
Web Server at communityreachingout.com"

It is a 403 error, according to the title bar.

Here is a hint for future versions. Have a separate "Run Diagnostics" button.. maybe it would fish out the problem. lol

I look forward to any suggestions you might have.

-Chris

[coldstone]

That is strange. The only other times I have seen the forbidden error is when a server does some anti-spam scanning. One user couldn't create entries that had the word 'casino' in them, his web server would give him a 'forbidden' when he tried to save the entry.

I can't imagine this is the same issue though, as the configs shouldn't have too much new between 1.7.4 and 1.8.2. You can see if its the saving thats giving you problems by changing your url from gm.cgi to this:
gm.cgi?section=configs&dodiagrepair=1&authorname=[authorname]&authorpassword=[authorpassword]

You'll want to replace the variables '[authorname]' and '[authorpassword]' with the real values, which can be found on any greymatter page, after you have logged in.

[mrmarketeer]

Ok.. we might be nearing a solution. Using the URL specified in your message and replacing the variables indicated resulted in Greymatter not recognizing the password. I tried this several times.

Now, here is a related kink. If I allow my browser to use the saved password I can log in fine. If I type in the password in the password field, Greymatter does not recognize it.

I went in and changed the password for the author, the password changed fine, but entering the specified url with the password still results in the password being invalid. But greymatter does recognize it when I type it in.

Any suggestions?

-Chris

[coldstone]

The password in the authors file should be different than the one you type in, I forgot. If you look at your gm-authors.cgi file, you should see your username then a '|' then a bunch of characters. This is your password after it has been encoded by Greymatter. This helps prevent someone from looking at your author file and getting the password.

Use this string of characters (between the second and third '|') as the password in the url.

[mrmarketeer]

Ok.. by using that URL it ran the diagnostics and says everything is ok. But, I still can not save the config.

The config file is chmoded 666.

On a whim, I chmoded it to 777, but I still could not save the config file from GM.

Any suggestions?

-Chris

[mrmarketeer]

By the way.. when the error occurs... http://../../gm.cgi stills shows up in the URL field at the top of the browser.

[coldstone]

Ok, I suspect that its not something Greymatter is doing. There is a way to test, but its kind of a pain in the ass. Make a backup of gm-config.cgi and then try blanking out all the text fields on the config screen. It should complain that you can't have certain fields blank. Put in fake values, anything to see if it will save.

If you can get it to save, then copy back your gm-config.cgi from your backup and try removing one text field at a time (start at the bottom with the non-required stuff).

This still might now work, but it will give us more information.