Avatars

[Tolki]

Deatilsplz Frugger.

deviantart is to art, as google is to internet.

=D

[Frug]

Deatilsplz Frugger.

The files uploaded to the server appear to have random permissions attached to them. Anything from 100 to 777. If anyone has used linux (or ftp) to manage file permissions you'll be familiar with the numbers. They give permission for the file owner (first digit) group (second digit) and public (third digit) to read, write, and execute the file (execute applies to programs and directories mostly).

So as I was looking through the files on the server as I sometimes do for no particular reason at all, I noticed the avatars directory was full of files I could not view. Actually it was full of files that nobody (by the looks of it) could view from a browser. I couldn't view them using the permissions of the file manager we use (Plesk). So, in my zeal I made three assumptions:
a) if I can't view with plesk's administrative permissions, nobody can, b) phpbb3 would be consistent in applying file permissions to uploaded files so these strange files must be erroneous, and c) they were probably remnants of avatars uploaded from deleted accounts from way back when we upgraded from phpbb2.

If I wasn't an idiot I would have just changed the file permissions and/or downloaded them to look at them. But I am sometimes quite the idiot, and I deleted them. My assumptions were actually wrong on all three counts. Phpbb3 doesn't display the files directly, but rather pulls them and recreates them, and therefore can access them with 'owner' permissions as opposed to the usual group permissions. It's not consistent when it applies permissions, but seems to randomly slap on whatever permissions it feels like. And they're not from deleted accounts. They were Tsai's and Anjas and a few others

Now I do keep a backup of thar on my machine in case I delete anything important. But lo and behold all the files I deleted are avatars uploaded after I made my last backup.

[Tolki]

Mmmm,

it's all about learning, innit?

I was being facetious but you can't really tell that through type can you? xD

Sounds like a pain in the bossom, generally.