[wp-hackers] Backup plugin and writability

[Scott Merrill]

Elliotte Harold wrote:
> I enabled the WordPress 2.0 backup plugin and tried to backup. I got
> these two messages:
> 
> WARNING: Your wp-content directory is NOT writable! We can not create
> the backup directory.
> /var/www/cafe/wp-content/backup-05ad9/
> 
> WARNING: Your backup directory is NOT writable! We can not create the
> backup directory.
> /var/www/cafe/
> 
> 
> 1. Why is it trying to writing anything to /var/www/cafe/?
> /var/www/cafe/wp-content/backup-05ad9/ I understand, but /var/www/cafe
> shouldn't need to be written.

It's checking whether it can create the directory it needs.

> 2. Why isn't it using /usr/tmp for temporary files like a good Unix
> program?

WordPress is not a good UNIX program, it's a web-based application.  It
might be running on Windows, in which case /usr/tmp is a bogus value.

> 3. Is there any way to configure it to tell it to use this location
> instead?

You can edit the plugin as needed.  Line 22:
define('WP_BACKUP_DIR', 'wp-content/backup-' . $rand);

> I'm very nervous about making directories world writable just so
> WordPress can muck with them.

As am I.  I started a thread about this just before the 2.0 release.
Matt's official response was "wp-content was always meant to be writable
by the webserver".

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