The directory sites/default/files is not writable on Mac OS X

Question

I had my website developed by someone else and it is currently working with no issues on our web server. I'm trying to set the same site up on my Mac OS X 10.6 using the preinstalled Apache server, MySQL, and PHP5. Also, it's Drupal 6.22 we're using. I copied all of the website files (including Drupal and the .htaccess file) and put them in /Library/WebServer/Documents/website. I then did a mysql backup on the server and imported that file on the local machine with phpMyAdmin. I configured the settings.php file and everything else to work nicely so it can connect to the DB, etc.

Most of the site works as expected, however, there is a couple of nodes that won't work at all. Instead I get this message when I go to them:

"The site is currently not available due to technical problems. Please try again later. Thank you for your understanding."

The weird part is if I enter in the URL to go to the edit page for that node it works, but I still cannot view the page.

When trying to search for problems that only issue I found anywhere is in the "Status Report" page it says the file system is not writable. I get this message:

"The directory sites/default/files is not writable."

I checked the permissions and that folder has drwxr-xr-x set for it.

Any ideas as to what might not be set properly would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The files directory in your site must be writable by the webserver. In the finder, do a Get Info on the files directory and assign read & write permissions to staff. (Make sure that this applies to any directories inside files as well.) Alternatively, in the terminal you could "chmod -R 775 my-site-path/sites/default/files" to take care of files and any contained subdirectories.

Answer 2

I had checked which user is running the "httpd" process. In my case it was "daemon".

sudo chown -R daemon sites/default/files/ had solved the problem (permissions: 775)