[RESOLVED] MODX Revolution Installation error

Hey guys,

I’ve installed Revo a million times and I’ve never had an issue except this time.

When I run the setup script, this is what I get: (the domain was removed for security reasons)

Fatal error: Smarty error: the $compile_dir ’/var/www/vhosts/xxx.info/httpdocs/core/cache/setup/smarty/’ does not exist, or is not a directory. in /var/www/vhosts/xxx.info/httpdocs/core/model/smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 1092

Does any one know what’s going on?

Your usual hosting that’s always worked? If that’s true, I’d vote on a bad FTP upload - some files gone missing. Possibly re-try that?

Cheers, D

I tried uploading a new install, but I’m still getting the same error.

I’m using a different host than this time.

Can anyone help please?

- Does that directory exist?
- Is it writable by the PHP process?

Quote from: splittingred at Nov 16, 2010, 03:06 PM

- Does that directory exist?
- Is it writable by the PHP process?

No the directory does not exit, but when I attempt to create it I get

Command: MKD test3
Response: 550 test3: Permission denied

Now, I should note that I can create directory elsewhere
i.e: core/cache
core/

But not in core/setup. I can’t even upload. I’ve contacted my host and I’m still waiting. Is there anything else I can do in the mean time?

Hey Guys,

this is what the hosting company just wrote regarding my being unable to manually create a smarty directory


Directory /var/www/vhosts/site-name-hidden.info/httpdocs/core/cache/setup is owned by user of the apache server
as it was created via PHP

drwxr-xr-x 2 wwwrun www 4096 Nov 16 19:50 setup

therefore it can only be changed or written to via php unless further permissions are set to it.
I changed the permissions of the folder to 777 so you can create your files there.

This is happening because you configured PHP to run as apache module for this domain, therefore it
runs with permissions of the webserver’’s user not your ftp account’’s user as it would be if you configured php
to run as fastcgi module.

The made that directory writable since I couldn’t manually and now I get this maessage:

MODx had to restart the setup process as a security precaution because setup was idle for over 15 minutes. Please re-attempt running setup at this time.

I gives me the option of selecting a languange and when I submit the select button, nothing happens.

I deleted everything in the core/cache directory as suggested in this post http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=55380.0 but this recreates the initial problem that gave me this error:

Fatal error: Smarty error: the $compile_dir ’/var/www/vhosts/site-name-hidden.info/httpdocs/core/cache/setup/smarty/’ does not exist, or is not a directory. in /var/www/vhosts/site-name-hidden.info/httpdocs/core/model/smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 1092

I’ve been on this all night and I’d appreciate some help please.

This issue was resolved by turning off safe_mode.

Much thanks to all who helped