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"Freeola PHP - no support for file submissions"

Thought you might be interested to learn that Freeola have made changes to their PHP setup which now means you can't process file uploads via PHP.

So, if you have a form like:

Upload photo:

for example, as part of a community photo gallery, you won't be able to process any photos uploaded via your scripts.

Similarly, if you've got an online shop where you could previously upload product photos, you'll find this no longer works either.

Freeola's response is: tough! If you don't like it, move your site to someone else!!!

Surprised? I definitely was.

Thank you for being so helpful Bob, Vexxxed and Garin :)

A gold star for you all!

Just need to clarify this situation somewhat. We have not turned on safe mode but tried some other measures instead, this is not to say that we will not be turning it on just that we are at present trying to find a better solution.

On the issue of file uploads we should be able to resolve this with the current measures and hopefully they will start working again in the next few days. Sorry for the inconvenience folks.

I guess the main problem was the brick wall response I got from support - "we don't support file uploads", so find somewhere else to host your site.

By the looks of it, that isn't strictly true - all it needed was a more carefully worded response that suggested that PHP was now going to run in safe mode and therefore any copying of files outside of my webspace wouldn't work, unless I updated the script, so maybe take a look at [... useful reference ...], etc.

Anyway - thanks for the explanation and clarification from everyone on here. Much appreciated.

Unfortunately we do not offer support on PHP our selves, however you were probably unlucky that Bob didn't see this message, otherwise he may well have helped you out!

open_basedir restriction basically says you're not allowed to access files outside of your document root. As long as the source and destination is within your document root (or in a sub directory of it) then copy will work.

Thanks for that. The move_uploaded_file function seems to have resolved the issue. Now, why couldn't Freeola's support been that helpful?

Does this mean, however, that other uses of "copy" will now no longer work? e.g. If I had a "duplicate product" script that simply made a copy of an existing product's images (as the files being copied wouldn't be "just uploaded" files, so move_uploaded_file wouldn't work).

I'll read further on this but if you know off hand, that would be helpful.

phpprob wrote:
> Warning: copy(): open_basedir restriction in effect.
> File(/var/tmp/phpRHJTJL) is not within the allowed path(s): ...
>
> Obviously, this could have a big effect on a number of sites -
> I'm going to have to transfer my sites across to a different
> hosting company...

Ah ok... I'd imagine you'll have some difficulty finding a host thats not running with open_basedir restrictions though. Most hosts these days run PHP in safe mode (which includes the open_basedir restrictions).

In this case it just appears to be a script using out of date methods. PHP has built in functions to deal with file uploads which arent affected by this problem, ie the script should be using move_uploaded_file instead of copy.

That sounds like it's going to involve a lot of money and hassle :/

I don't fully know what Freeola have done and therefore don't know exactly what it effects. The responses from support haven't been very clear or helpful. To quote:

"Please be advised that we do not explicitly support PHP uploads. The upgrade we have made to the security of PHP has stopped these scripts from working. Unfortunately we have no current plans to fix this scripts in the near future."

I think the problem comes when you try to make a copy of an uploaded file (from /var/tmp) - typical error message that we get now (that we didn't before Freeola made their "security fix") is:

Warning: copy(): open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/var/tmp/phpRHJTJL) is not within the allowed path(s): ...

Obviously, this could have a big effect on a number of sites - I'm going to have to transfer my sites across to a different hosting company...

Well, file uploading still works on another Freeola hosted site that I know of. Are you sure its been disabled totally?

Can somebody from Freeola confirm this? I have a couple of Freeola hosted clients that this might impact.