Category Archives: Tech Bits

Tech, IT & web stuff.

Permission denied: /.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file

If you ever see this in your Apache logs:

Permission denied: /path/to/web/data/html/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable

Think permissions, permissions, permissions. If you have chmod’ed your .htaccess 644 or even 777 and it’s still not working, start traversing up your directory tree and make sure apache can access everything at each level.

Permissions required will depend on the exact server and software setup, but generally something like 755 (drwxr-xr-x) is probably a good start.

Joomla error number 2006 MySQL server has gone away

I look after a number of servers in my spare time 🙂 One of the guys who I help out contacted me recently with a weird Joomla issue when trying to install a particular component.

* JInstaller::install: SQL Error. DB function failed with error
number 2006
MySQL server has gone away SQL=CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS
`jos_comprofiler` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL default ‘0’, `user_id` int(11) NOT

Other modules and components would install fine, the only one failing to install was comprofiler, part of the Community Builder module for Joomla/Mambo. Other parts of the same module were also installing fine.
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Gmail “Account Disabled”

Less than a week after helping one of my brothers move 500mb of email to a shiny new gmail account he gave me a frantic call.

At login he was getting an error stating “Your account has been disabled”, new email to his gmail account was just bouncing with a user unknown error.

When you have done a massive sell on any particular technology, it’s always heart in mouth when you get these type of calls from family/relatives/friends 🙂

I logged a support query using the form and got a response back inside 24 hours.

Recently the Gmail team launched several features intended to detect and prevent
breaches of our Terms of Use, such as spamming. As a result, a number of users who
may have not been acting in breach of these terms were affected. The issue has since
been resolved, and these users have had access to their accounts restored. We
apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Seems that he wasn’t alone.

Gmail has IMAP – Finally!

Have you ever wished that Gmail had IMAP capability? Well the wait is nearly over it seems!

I noticed today under the settings area for one of my Gmail accounts “Forwarding & POP” has been expanded to be Forwarding & POP/IMAP” and there is the appropriate section to to enable/disable IMAP.

Gmail IMAP

So now there is another option to access Gmail, it’s just about the perfect email solution 🙂