phpBB version check – 3.0.12 Fail

That particular message means one of two things:

1) Your VPS or dedicated server is set up to run PHP as the “nobody” or “apache” user. This can be solved by giving all phpBB files 0666 or 0777 permissions (not recommended), or by recompiling Apache and PHP so PHP runs as a system-created user (the user in /home/(user)/).

2) You uploaded the phpBB files as the root user. This can be solved by using the CHOWN command to change ownership of the phpBB files to the above user (the user in /home/(user)/).

Once you correct the issue, the requirements plugin will report PASS for your phpBB installation.

Hello,
Apache runs as www-data, php’s master process (for php-fpm) runs as root.
I’d rather not recompile apache and php since I’m using official debian packages and it’s easier to maintain the system up to date with these packages.

If you’re running php-fpm, you can change the user and group for PHP in the PHP-FPM configuration file (usually named php-fpm.conf). The best way to do this is to create an FPM pool and set the user/group in the pool configuration.

Once you get PHP running as the account user, your system will most likely pass the BridgeDD requirements check. You will also be able to stop messing around with 0777 file permissions in WordPress/phpBB, and no longer require bizarre methods to auto-update WordPress/phpBB.

I’m happy to continue this discussion on either of my support boards:

https://forum.dion-designs.com/index.php
https://diondesigns.org/bridgedd/support/index.php

You can also use “FPM pool configuration” as a search term in most search engines to obtain information.