Finding missing person Images Directory when her own CMS says she doesn't exist

(Or: Cracking the case of the recalcitrant images directory)

The client came to me, late at night, distraught, and with numerous PNGs of the crime. He filled up my inbox with desperate messages, and the files attached at the bottom of this post:

• why???
• seriously! what the hell is going on here?? the site doesn't seem to be in touch with the server at all!?
• seriously why? disabled and reenabled the modules, deleted the images folder and remade it

  argh!

... it was 2:47 a.m. when I finished my preliminary investigation (the client, better known as my business partner, wasn't insane after all) and first got on the case.

Image
The directory does not exist.
File paths
Default image path:
sites/djgoose.net/files/bluemarine/images
Subdirectory in the directory "sites/djgoose.net/files" where pictures will be stored. Do not include trailing slash.

No, that directory certainly didn't exist. My mark was right, for the moment.

Image
The directory does not exist.
The settings have not been saved because of the errors.
File paths
Default image path:
images
Subdirectory in the directory "sites/djgoose.net/files" where pictures will be stored. Do not include trailing slash.

Now things are getting interesting.

chown -R www-data:www-data images

(Yes, that's a capital R to mean recurse through the directories in this command. Unix and GNU-Linux are not completely logical and consistent.)

No dice.

I'm going to have to work my usual sources:

• Drupal images module image "directory does not exist"

We weren't the only folks to encounter this monster:

Help... I'm trapped in 'Directory Does Not Exist' Hell!
http://drupal.org/node/148601

No one seemed to have a handle on it. And then, a ray of light:

All I did was go the File System settings and change the 'file system path' to a path that I knew doesn't exist. It then of course tells you "this directory doesn't exist". At which point I changed it back to my original path, saved and navigated back to the user settings page. Which, to my surprise, had reset with a blank field for the 'picture image path'. I entered 'pictures'.... and whaahay I'm up and running!

I followed the man's advice.

The result:

The directory carabou does not exist.

So far, so good. Saved it as blank for good measure.

Back to this weird one, but then, it told me it never saved:

sites/djgoose.net/files/bluemarine/images

Changed it to images, and nothing. Same error.

Nothing on the police blotter about our incident.

Some other good news, a patch to be ported for "Custom image sizes skipped if original is smaller," but that minor annoyance seemed like years ago.

There wasn't anything left to do.

I went into the database.

dj_goose_net, variable

Found my culprit, image_default_path, still spouting that inane bluemarine story.

He took a swing at me and I knocked him flat with a phpMyAdmin command.

The command ran successfully:

UPDATE `djgoose_net_variable` SET `value` = 's:6:"images";' WHERE CONVERT( `djgoose_net_variable`.`name` USING utf8 ) = 'image_default_path' LIMIT 1 ;

Went back to have a look at admin/settings/image to make sure everything was all right.

The directory sites/djgoose.net/files/images/temp has been created.

Couldn't be sweeter.

A successful end to forty-five minutes of hard-boiled detective work.

I tipped the authorities off to our boy's activities:

http://drupal.org/node/166145

Hope they can deal with him without my help.

Another chapter in the life of a web developer. Now... to the real work. The days-long slog, with only hours left to go, where bugs like these are all part of the game.

Soon to be a major motion picture!