"File Locking Error" message upon setting up the board

To prevent files from being corrupted by simultaneous access, Discus has a built-in file locking system. On infrequent occasions, especially on busy discussion boards, the file locking error message may occur to protect your data. This is normal operation, if the error message occurs only infrequently.

On a newly installed discussion board, a persistent file locking error message is a symptom of a permissions problem. This error occurs when your web server cannot correctly write to the Discus "locks" file or directory on your site. This problem in itself is typically easy to solve by setting permissions correctly.

In most cases, this message occurs on Windows servers because those servers do not allow permissions to be changed remotely. It can also occur on unix servers if the setup instructions regarding permissions are not followed.

If you have FTP access only to your Windows server, there is no way that you can remotely set permissions on your files. Windows servers do not allow changing permissions remotely by FTP the same way that unix servers do. Permissions on files can only be changed from the console, which means that you will need to e-mail your web host's support staff and have them set the permissions for you. Here is a sample e-mail message (make sure you customize it by filling in the necessary information in the green spaces. You can get this information from your discus.conf file.

Dear Support Staff:

To complete the installation of the Discus discussion board software package
on my site, I need permissions changes for the following:

* {Your Administration Directory}
* {Your Discus HTML Directory}

The permissions should be set such as "CHANGE" for the web server user (or
"CHANGE" for "EVERYONE"). Permissions should be set for these folders as
well as for all files and folders therein. Please let me know when these
changes are completed.

Sincerely,
{Your Name}

If you run the server yourself, you can set these permissions through the Windows explorer program. Navigate to your administration directory and set permissions for full access for everyone. This should be applied recursively to all subdirectories. Then do the same for the Discus HTML directory. Click here for details.

This generally occurs only when you have done an FTP setup. You must read through the "readme.html" file and make sure you have set the required permissions. Specifically you must set the permissions on the "locks" directory itself to 0777 (rwxrwxrwx). This "locks" directory is found in your Discus administration directory, typically named something like discus_admin_1234567890.

If you have verified the permissions but the error still occurs, the errors.txt file (in your Discus administration directory) may record the cause of the problem. Examine this file to see if it is a permissions problem, or if some other error message is recorded to help you troubleshoot the problem.