I was attempting to get the Yii Framework yii-user extension working for a test web site earlier today when I got this fatal error / exception message:
Alias “user.UserModule” is invalid. Make sure it points to an existing PHP file and the file is readable.
Despite what others have already reported (online), my error was simply caused by a faulty folder permission setting. You see, when I unzipped the archive file (yii-user-0.3-61-gfc69518.zip), it did not occur to me to check the permissions of all the directories in the extracted directory. When I finally thought about checking the folder permissions, this is what I found:
[[email protected] ~]$ ls -l $HOME/Downloads total 999 ... drwx------. 9 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 mishamx-yii-user-fc69518 -rw-rw-r--. 1 woohoo woohoo 303287 Feb 28 18:24 yii-user-0.3-61-gfc69518.zip ... [[email protected] ~]$ ls -l $HOME/Downloads/mishamx-yii-user-fc69518 total 40 drwx------. 2 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 components drwx------. 2 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 controllers drwx------. 2 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 data drwx------. 14 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 messages drwx------. 2 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 migrations drwx------. 2 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 models -rw-rw-r--. 1 woohoo woohoo 3472 Jun 12 2012 README.md -rw-rw-r--. 1 woohoo woohoo 6267 Jun 12 2012 UserModule.php drwx------. 8 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 views
Every folder and subfolder created with permission set to 700…
Rookie mistake, I know! 🙂
Solution: Change all folder permissions to 755/775
Using the find & chmod commands together, I changed the permissions of the extracted directory and its sub-directories like this:
find $HOME/Downloads/mishamx-yii-user-fc69518 -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
After that, the folders looked like this:
[[email protected] ~]$ ls -l $HOME/Downloads total 999 ... drwxrwxr-x. 9 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 mishamx-yii-user-fc69518 -rw-rw-r--. 1 woohoo woohoo 303287 Feb 28 18:24 yii-user-0.3-61-gfc69518.zip ... [[email protected] ~]$ ls -l $HOME/Downloads/mishamx-yii-user-fc69518 total 40 drwxrwxr-x. 2 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 components drwxrwxr-x. 2 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 controllers drwxrwxr-x. 2 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 data drwxrwxr-x. 14 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 messages drwxrwxr-x. 2 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 migrations drwxrwxr-x. 2 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 models -rw-rw-r--. 1 woohoo woohoo 3472 Jun 12 2012 README.md -rw-rw-r--. 1 woohoo woohoo 6267 Jun 12 2012 UserModule.php drwxrwxr-x. 8 woohoo woohoo 4096 Mar 1 03:58 views
Eventually the folder: $HOME/Downloads/mishamx-yii-user-fc69518 was moved to its correct place with a quick mv command:
[[email protected] ~]$ mv $HOME/Downloads/mishamx-yii-user-fc69518 $HOME/public_html/protected/modules/user
Now everything about the yii-user extension is working as it should.