AppStarter Vanilla Installation - No hint that writable directory is not writable

[Tilogorn]

Just installed CI4 via AppStarter, changed nothing more than the baseURL and got a 500 in the browser saying "Whoops! We seem to have hit a snag. Please try again later...".

Digging deeper I found out that there happens a call to a cache()->get()-function which checks if the current request is already cached. Combined with the finding, that the default cache handler is "file", I guessed and made the writable directory writable for www-data and the request succeeded.

Neither the installation section in the CI4-docs nor the CI4-error message gave me a hint to the correct direction. Maybe one of those two could be optimized (preferring a more meaningful 500 error message). It was just experienced PHP-dev intuition and debugging in the vendors directory, which not everyone may be capable of, that lead me to the right fix.

[Tilogorn]

Just noticed that this is perfectly documented when one changes the environment to "development". I'll close the issue although I am not super happy with this behaviour. Might or might not discourage newbies to PHP/CodeIgniter; even an experienced dev like me did not think automatically that the default environment may prevent helpful error messages from displaying.

Maybe a little hint on the installation page may not be the worst idea, but thats up to the devs.

[jim-parry]

Which OS are you using? When I install the appstarter on Linux, it results in app, public & vendor all writable

[Tilogorn]

Writable yes, but for the wrong user.

$ cat /etc/*-release
DISTRIB_ID=LinuxMint
DISTRIB_RELEASE=19
DISTRIB_CODENAME=tara
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 19 Tara"
NAME="Linux Mint"
VERSION="19 (Tara)"
ID=linuxmint
ID_LIKE=ubuntu
PRETTY_NAME="Linux Mint 19"
VERSION_ID="19"
HOME_URL="https://www.linuxmint.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forums.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://linuxmint-troubleshooting-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.linuxmint.com/"
VERSION_CODENAME=tara
UBUNTU_CODENAME=bionic

$ php composer.phar create-project codeigniter4/appstarter -s beta --no-dev
Installing codeigniter4/appstarter (v4.0.0-beta.2)
  - Installing codeigniter4/appstarter (v4.0.0-beta.2): Loading from cache
Created project in /var/www/html/appstarter
Loading composer repositories with package information
Installing dependencies from lock file
Warning: The lock file is not up to date with the latest changes in composer.json. You may be getting outdated dependencies. Run update to update them.
Package operations: 4 installs, 0 updates, 0 removals
  - Installing zendframework/zend-escaper (2.6.0): Loading from cache
  - Installing psr/log (1.1.0): Loading from cache
  - Installing kint-php/kint (2.2): Loading from cache
  - Installing codeigniter4/framework (v4.0.0-alpha.4): Loading from cache
Generating autoload files
$ ls -la appstarter/
insgesamt 128
drwxrwxr-x  7 tilogorn   tilogorn    4096 Apr 10 18:06 .
drwxrwxr-x 44 www-data www-data  4096 Apr 10 18:05 ..
drwxrwxr-x 12 tilogorn   tilogorn    4096 Apr  4 09:12 app
-rw-rw-r--  1 tilogorn   tilogorn     664 Apr  4 09:12 composer.json
-rw-rw-r--  1 tilogorn   tilogorn   60615 Apr  4 09:12 composer.lock
-rw-rw-r--  1 tilogorn   tilogorn    5288 Apr  4 09:12 contributing.md
-rw-rw-r--  1 tilogorn   tilogorn    3228 Apr  4 09:12 env
-rw-rw-r--  1 tilogorn   tilogorn     367 Apr  4 09:12 .gitignore
-rw-rw-r--  1 tilogorn   tilogorn    1084 Apr  4 09:12 LICENSE
-rw-rw-r--  1 tilogorn   tilogorn    1112 Apr  4 09:12 license.txt
-rw-rw-r--  1 tilogorn   tilogorn     840 Apr  4 09:12 phpunit.xml.dist
drwxrwxr-x  2 tilogorn   tilogorn    4096 Apr  4 09:12 public
-rw-rw-r--  1 tilogorn   tilogorn    2445 Apr  4 09:12 README.md
-rwxr-xr-x  1 tilogorn   tilogorn    1775 Apr  4 09:12 spark
drwxrwxr-x 19 tilogorn   tilogorn    4096 Apr  4 09:12 _support
drwxrwxr-x  7 tilogorn   tilogorn    4096 Apr 10 18:06 vendor
drwxrwxr-x  7 tilogorn   tilogorn    4096 Apr  4 09:12 writable

[jim-parry]

I see it user (you) and group writable. Who should it be writable for?

[Tilogorn]

The apache user! On Ubuntu&Co www-data. The one that writes to cache files etc. when you access the framework with a browser.
At least thats my understanding of writable and it solved my issue.

[jim-parry]

Hmmm - I think that will have to go in the writeup rather than the script, then, as that could vary between platforms.