Archive for January 5th, 2012

How to solve “[crit] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] (13)Permission denied: /var/lib/ejabberd/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable, referer: http://jabber.mydomain.com/” – Error Cause and Solution

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

While configuring JWchat domain, I've come across around an error:

pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable

The exact error I got in /var/log/apache2/error.log looked like so:

[crit] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] (13)Permission denied: /var/lib/ejabberd/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable, referer: http://jabber.mydomain.com/

The error message suggested /var/lib/ejabberd/.htaccess – is missing or not readable, however after checking i've seen .htaccess existed as well as was readable:

debian:~# ls -al /var/lib/ejabberd/.htaccess
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 114 2012-01-05 07:44 /var/lib/ejabberd/.htaccess

At first glimpse it seems like the message is misleading and not true, however when I switched to www-data user (the user with which Apache runs on Debian), I've figured out the error meaning of unreadability is exactly correct:

www-data@debian:$ ls -al /var/lib/ejabberd/.htaccess
ls: cannot access /var/lib/ejabberd/.htaccess: Permission denied

This permission denied was quite strange, especially when considering the .htaccess is readable for all users:

debian:~# ls -al /var/lib/ejabberd/.htaccess
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 114 2012-01-05 07:44 /var/lib/ejabberd/.htaccess

After a thorough look on what might go wrong, thanksfully I've figured it out. The all issues were caused by wrong permissions of /var/lib/ejabberd/.htaccess .You can see below the executable flag for all users (including apache's www-data) is missing :

debian:/var/lib# ls -ld /var/lib/ejabberd/drw-r--r-- 3 ejabberd ejabberd 4096 2012-01-05 07:45 /var/lib/ejabberd/

Solving the error, hence is as easy as adding +x flag to /var/lib/ejabberd :

debian:/var/lib# chmod +x /var/lib/ejabberd

Another way to fix the error is to chmod to 755 to the directory which holds .htaccess:

From now onwards pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable err is no more 😉

IE PassView – View stored Microsoft Internet Explorer passwords program

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

While checking a friend of mine's blog, I've seen a reference to a Windows program capable of revealing stored website passwords.
Check stored internet explorer passwords in plaintext with IE PassView

IE PassView is a small password management utility that reveals the passwords stored by Internet Explorer Web browser, and allows you to delete passwords that you don't need anymore. It supports all versions of Internet Explorer, from version 4.0 and up to 9.0.
Ie PassView is quite a good one for crackers, who would like to steal some lame poor Windows IE user facebook,gmail, yahoo etc. passwords 😉 here is a link to IE Passview's download page