Simlink confusion --home1 deletion fatal error?

Hi Neo,

I have decided to post my problem to the forum because this hopefully will prevent someone from going through this. I was told by a techie at hostmonster that I should delete my files that I've wrapped within my initial site because it looked like a replica. So it would be like this home1/mysite/mysite/mysite/mysite/on an on/

She said just leave three tiers of mysite/ and I should be fine because they're all replicas.

This is how I've been loading my joomla sites for my clients, all within the public_html. My site and my clients sites are now are completely gone. It's been a catastrophe. Fortunately, I backed up everything file by file a month ago. The sites within myblog were over two gigs so the company wasn't backing me up. Unfortunately I've made so many revisions since then and I was calling the techie for cron job instructions when she said that I should delete the files!

(please know that hostmonster techies are normally good, this one told me to delete the files! she sounded like you definitely don't need these!)

This letter is for the forum. I did not understand the simlink situation and I'm not sure I understand it yet, but here goes:

The techie wrote this -note that she emphasizes "you deleted!) :

We have had a chance to look into this in full measure and this is what our Level 3 tech found out. You had created a symlink from your home directory to your home directory. That is what resulted in the multiple nesting and the unusual result when you deleted your files. Our Level 3 tech has removed the symlink. As long as you don't create another symlink from your home directory to your home directory, you shouldn't have the problems you encountered. Once you have uploaded your files, you should be able to set up the cron job to back up your account, which you would not have been able to do without removing files (due to the large number of files -and it wouldn't have mattered where you removed the files from - it would have had the same result, unless the symlinks were removed first). The only way the demo templates would have had anything to do with it is if they were having you create the symlink. Other than that there is no problem using Demo templates as you would any other template.

NOTE: I have found over 8,000 references to simlink on joomla in various capacities:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=joomla+"+symbolic+link"&start=10&sa =N

hehe, sure blame on anyone if you dont know the answer (to HM )

no hun they simply told you to do something which you should not have ,

deleting anything in joomla will not affect your complete site root ,even if you delete joomla config it will affect only that specific joomla installation, if you want have those reps join this discussion and we will advise them that THEY should not have told you to delete your home dir, now for a fact I know that they run weekly site backup and all you need to do is tell them to preform the backup for you

now to your path


if you see this in cpanel when you enter your site folder

home1/mysite/mysite/mysite/mysite/

it means that is where that site is located , and it is not a loop but a path to the folder otherwise cpanel would see this

home1/mysite

and should not be touched unless you know what you are doing ,


you should have asked us before you did anything , sorry for your trouble

Well Neo,

Live and learn. I've been having an auto-body experience since last night. By the time I'm done with the reinstall, I should be able to write a book.

Anyway, I'm curious, since I'm reinstalling everything (they said my site got too big for backup, btw, that's why I was trying to initiate the cronjob when I called last night!)

--- should I include configuration.php and configuration.php-dist ? I wasn't familiar with that... I do have the sample data, and I backed it all up last month.. so I'm just going to reinstall everything ugh!

if reinstalling a demo , no need for configuration.php it will be created on install

Actually, I'm reinstalling from my own file by file backup last month. But I noticed from my august backup that there is both a configuration.php and configuration.php-dist in my public_html. Is that common? Sorry, I guess you're saying that I don't need either the configuration.php-dist OR the config.php, that BOTH should recreate on install? I'm not using the installation folder, I'm just reinstalling the sample.sql (I hope I'm making some sense here!)

yes that is normal , if backup leave all files in , dont change anthing

Thanks Neo.. this has been a hard lesson! But I have a suggestion, ever think of starting a thread called "Joomla horror stories?"