On Jun 16, 2006, at 12:09 PM, Chris Moran wrote:

> My install of MediaWiki has been running just fine since I  
> installed it last year. Could be better with some tweaks, but I'm  
> not complaining much.
> HOWEVER... as of this morning, it just stopped working.
>
> Any page I try to get to (including the homepage obviously) returns:
>
> Warning: dir(): Unable to access /.../uvm.edu/fs/rack2b/u/uvmstaff/ 
> cmoran/public_html/mediawiki-1.5.0/skins in ./includes/Skin.php on  
> line 23
>
> Warning: dir(/.../uvm.edu/fs/rack2b/u/uvmstaff/cmoran/public_html/ 
> mediawiki-1.5.0/skins): failed to open dir: No such file or  
> directory in ./includes/Skin.php on line 23
>


The "rack2b" part of the path names above refers to the actual  
physical disk drive where the "cmoran" files live. In this case, USED  
TO live. The CIT Technical Services Group (TSG) reserves the right to  
move accounts from one drive to another to accommodate additional  
account or accounts that are using large amounts of storage space.  
Normally, these moves are transparent -- unless someone makes a hard  
reference to them in, say, a php file.

Apparently the cmoran account was moved, and now resides on disk rack3c

As far as mediawiki is concerned, the path name is set automatically  
during installation in the file LocalSettings.php


	$IP = "/.../uvm.edu/fs/rack2b/u/uvmstaff/cmoran/public_html/ 
mediawiki-1.5.0";

The long-term fix is NOT to change this line to

	$IP = "/.../uvm.edu/fs/rack2b/u/uvmstaff/cmoran/public_html/ 
mediawiki-1.5.0";

since TSG may move the account again. Rather, the correct approach is  
to use the (hopefully) permanent alias. In general, the alias is  
named by the convention

	/users/x/y/xyzzzzz

where

	xyzzzzz is the NetID
	x is the first letter of the NetID
	y is the second letter of the NetID

Thus, for this account, we have

	/users/c/m/cmoran

and the correct line to use in the LocalSettings.php file is then

	$IP = "/users/c/m/cmorann/public_html/mediawiki-1.5.0";

And thanks for he heads-up -- I've got a couple of LocalSettings.php  
files to update now, too!