I’v been struggling for hours to solve a weird problem with PHP in a cPanel environment.

This is how my log (/usr/local/apache/logs/error_log) looks like

[Tue Dec 30 21:13:09 2014] [error] [client 88.94.5.xxx] SoftException in Application.cpp:601: Directory "/home/dee/subdomains/www2.domain.com/members" is writeable by group
[Tue Dec 30 21:13:09 2014] [error] [client 88.94.5.XXX] Premature end of script headers: index.php
[Tue Dec 30 21:13:09 2014] [error] [client 88.94.5.XXX] File does not exist: /home/dee/subdomains/www2.domain.com/500.shtml

I thought that was some bad configuration on .htaccess … but that was wrong!
On some environments we need to have the right file/directory permissions so it work…

• files: 644
• directories: 755

Bad permissions, Writable by group

A bad permissions error may look something like this:

[Sun Jun 05 12:03:22 2012] [error] [client 66.249.72.82] SoftException in Application.cpp:601: Directory "/home/exampleuser/public_html" is writeable by group

In this instance the folder had permissions for a folder set too high. To correct this, the permissions need to be changed from “777” to “755”.

Directories and folders should be 755. Executable scripts within the cgi-bin folder must be 755. Images, media, and text files like HTML should be 644.

• Files – 644
• CGI Scripts – 755
• Directories – 755

You can modify permissions with the File Manager, located in the “Files” category of the cPanel, an FTP client, or using the chmodcommand in SSH/Bash.

 

References: https://my.hostmonster.com/cgi/help/594