Worried about folder/file permissions

[oobie]

I'm a bit of a newbie as you'll see....

After uploading my mambo site and SMF forum from my local machine to my web server, I found that there were a lot of files/folders in both cases that were not writeable that needed to be eg. configs etc.

The server had set the perms to the standard 755 for folders and 644 for files. It seems that the only way I can administer my forum and site is to set all the files and folders they are complaining about to 777! And that kind of scares me.....

Is it a case of the "owner" not being set correctly? In my case, when my hosting account was set up, I was given a username based on the site's domain. This is different to the Username I use for site and forum admin etc. Is this normal? Are some files and folders safe to be set to 777? I thought not....

Thanks in advance

oobie

[[Unknown]]

Why chmod 777 is NOT a security risk might be what you're looking for.

-[Unknown]

[oobie]

Thanks for that 

I am using SMF in a Mambo install. In the SMF Config screen in Mambo admin, it wants me to make:

/
/cache
/index.php

writable. In other words, I have to chmod these to 777. Is this typical or have I got ownership issues?

[[Unknown]]

I'm afraid I don't really know enough about Mambo to answer that.

-[Unknown]

[Kindred]

yes... this is typical.

and yes... you probably also have owner issues.   components and modules installed by Mambo are installed, actually by php... and so the owner is "nobody".

it's bloody annoying! because doing that means that you can no longer modify files via FTP.   

but it is not a security risk to set your directories/files to 777.