[cobalt-users] More FrontPage fun when chaning IP addresses... Break's CGI's

["Brent Soper" <bsoper@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Found another bug.
When a FrontPage site changes IP's, if there was a CGI of any sort they were
using (Which of course they had to upload using FTP because of the "Security
fix" that cobalt sent down), it changes the permissions of the file back to
Nobody (the frontpage ownership) and renders the file no longer runable...
AND, the site administrators can not overwrite it or delete the file, unless
they do it within front page.  It also changes any directory permissions
that had to be set to allow the CGI scripts to write to the directories.

I now have to hand fix EVERY site as root to get them to work again,
resetting the ownerships of the files by hand.

And this still does not address the problem where the cobalt backup/restore
on the UI is now totally useless to the customer because they can not
restore the files that are owned by FrontPage.    I also can't even back
them up USING front page if they have a CGI, because FrontPage can't do
anything with the files that are not owned by FrontPage.  (You get a "Can
Not change permissions on whatever file is the CGI when you try to publish
it to a local directory on the hard drive.)

I can't begin to understand how bad these bugs are and why cobalt's answer
is "well..  sorry, but there isn't anteing you can do about it" when I
contacted them when this problem with the CGI's first came up.   I am out of
my 30 day "support" at this point, so I doubt they will even talk to me.   I
finally added some of the security updates from the cobalt site just last
week, because I am afraid to add any more "Fixes" to my box because of the
problems I have had with this.     I have already stopped adding websites to
the cobalt box, and have switched anyone that wants to use FrontPage to a
Windows 2000 server.

The sole reason I bought the cobalt to do hosting was because it had all of
this GUI stuff and FP extensions already ready to go.  It makes my support
people very happy, and my sales-support people can setup sites easily.  Now
I have to physically touch every site that gets setup, and if they want to
use CGI-BIN files I have to explain to every one of them how they have to
make a new subdirectory for their CGI's using FTP, and never to publish
anything to that directory using FrontPage or it will trash it.

I am going to try editing the http.conf by hand to change the rest of my
sites.  I have a feeling this will break FP files though (I tried this once
with very limited success), and am almost 100% sure it will break the UI for
that site.   [crossing fingers]

----- Original Message -----
From: "BlackSun" <admin@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Brent Soper" <bsoper@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2001 2:59 PM
Subject: Re: FrontPage


> Hey Brent,
>
> > Same server..  Yes.
> > I moved a few others, and about 1/2 of them work perfectly when I move
them,
> > and about half of them completely get trashed.
> > The ones that get trashed SEEM to be the sites that are using a "theme"
as
> > apposed to just using more standard pages.
>
> That's weird.
>
> > Thanks for the e-mail by the way..
> > The way I am setting it up now will have all the virtual sites on the
same
> > IP address, so just in case I ever have to change them again..
>
> No problem. Note that there may be a bug that doesn't
> properly re-number one IP address in the httpd.conf
> file, so you may have to do that manually. --Jay
>
>