Solutions to the permission errors most often seen right after installation.
Each one comes from a directory the application needs to write to — data, data/cache, public/uploads or log — and is fixed by granting write access to that directory.
If running your project, you encounter some permission issues, follow the below steps.
PHP Fatal error: Uncaught InvalidArgumentException: The directory "/var/www/example.local/html/data" is not writable...
PHP Fatal error: Uncaught InvalidArgumentException: The directory "/var/www/example.local/html/data/cache" is not writable...
PHP Fatal error: Uncaught InvalidArgumentException: The directory "/var/www/example.local/html/data/cache/doctrine" is not writable...
Fix:
chmod -R 777 dataPHP Fatal error: Uncaught InvalidArgumentException: The directory "/var/www/example.local/html/public/uploads" is not writable...
Fix:
chmod -R 777 public/uploadsPHP Fatal error: Uncaught ErrorException: fopen(/var/www/example.local/config/autoload/../../log/error-log-yyyy-mm-dd.log): Failed to open stream: Permission denied...
Fix:
chmod -R 777 logQ: Why do these errors appear right after installation?
A: The application writes caches to data, uploaded files to public/uploads and log files to log.
If those directories are not writable by the web server user, the first request that needs them fails.
Q: Which directories need write access?
A: data (including data/cache and data/cache/doctrine), public/uploads and log.
Applying the permissions recursively with -R covers the subdirectories.
Q: Is granting 777 safe?
A: Access to application files is governed by the .htaccess rules: only public is served directly and everything else is routed through index.php, so these writable folders are not reachable from the web.
See Clone the project.
Q: I get a blank 500 response with no message. Where do I look?
A: Check the web server error log first, since a log directory that is not writable prevents the application from recording the error itself.
Fixing the log permissions usually makes the real message appear.
Q: Are there other common installation problems besides permissions?
A: Yes — missing configuration files and an unmigrated database. See Configuration files and Doctrine ORM.