Articles

WordPress – unable to create directory

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Updated: 16 January 2022

Resolution for ‘Unable to create directory’ error in WordPress.

This error is caused by an inappropriate set of folder and file permissions. The following statements assume you have shell access to the document root of your webserver.

Set owner and group of each folder and file to the webserver user
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html

Set permissions for all folders to 755
sudo find /var/www/html -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

Set permissions for all files to 644
sudo find /var/www/html -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

For problems uploading images, also check the uploads folder is set appropriately in WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Media. If already set to the default wp-content/uploads, this field may not be visible.

Homestead Vagrant xdebug3 vscode phpspec

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Updated: 18 July 2021

Reset to original state

./vagrant destroy --force && ./vagrant up

.vscode/launch.json

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Listen for Xdebug",
            "type": "php",
            "request": "launch",
            "port": 9003,
            "log": true,
            "pathMappings": {
                "/home/vagrant/homestead.test": "/home/chris/code/homestead.test"
            }
        }
    ]
}

Start an ssh session

./vagrant ssh

Create the xdebug log file

sudo touch /var/log/xdebug.log && sudo chmod 777 /var/log/xdebug.log

Create xdebug settings
sudo nano /etc/php/7.4/fpm/conf.d/20-xdebug.ini

zend_extension=xdebug.so
xdebug.mode = debug
xdebug.discover_client_host = true
xdebug.client_host = 192.168.10.1
xdebug.client_port = 9003
xdebug.max_nesting_level = 512

; required for cli debugging but for browser
; could omit and use query string at end
; of url instead XDEBUG_SESSION_START=name
xdebug.start_with_request = yes

; ensure file exists and is writeable
xdebug.log = /var/log/xdebug.log

Switch to cli PHP 7.4

php74

For cli debugging (alias xon=’sudo phpenmod -s cli xdebug’)

xon

After these changes

./vagrant reload --provision

Run phpspec

./vagrant ssh
tail -f /var/log/xdebug.log
project/dir vendor/bin/phpspec run

If vscode will not stop on a breakpoint try re-enabling PHP Debug extension and restarting vscode.

Run ngrok (outside of Homestead) pointing at a configured Homestead site

ngrok http 192.168.10.10:80 -host-header=site.dev