Solution for avatars (and other uploads) failing

[warz]

Just wanted to post a solution here for an issue that took us some time to figure out. If your avatar uploads are failing with "Failed to set a new photo," the problem is likely open_basedir.

If it is set in php.ini, upload_tmp_dir must be a subdirectory of open_basedir or uploads will fail.

IPB support is completely useless BTW since they refuse to troubleshoot anything if your setup is not 100% vanilla on an OS they like, with an HTTP server they like. How can php.ini configurations be outside the scope of support for software written in PHP? At least post suggested configs. Extremely upset that a problem that should've taken 5 minutes to resolve took 11 days of support blaiming everything from hooks to PHP version to server configuration.

[AndyF]

The problem is php.ini and other adjustments (ie tweaking my.ini for instance) have that many permutations not to mention all the php modules available its difficult to determine what is really needed so may fall outside the scope of support.

To be fair I've not heard of your issue previously and have seen IPB installed on many hosts "out of the box" and it just worked fine with uploads once the directory permissions were set, nothing else was needed. :)

I'll move your topic to Feedback as it does seem a more appropriate location (as I read it as a feedback post rather than a support topic) so it will be seen by IPS staff members.

[bfarber]

If we're going to discuss details of the ticket let's at least be clear.

Your ticket was submitted on the 6th and a firewall on your server prevented us from accessing it. That was not resolved until the 10th.

Then there was a day of back and forth because the error_logs provided weren't correct.

Then after our staff replied on the 12th there was no reply again until the 17th.

To suggest this ticket took 11 days is a misrepresentation I feel. And while the technicians suggested the issue was a problem with the server configuration, if the resolution was that open_basedir was causing issues - they were ultimately correct. :)