Unable to open settings file [seri0uS.aa]

[ccompass]

I have not made any changes to my store and all of the sudden I'm getting this error message with I try and add items to the cart or when I'm in the ShopSite administration site. I suspect my hosting provider made some permission changes but can't be sure. Is there a document that goes over the permission for ShopSite? Or does anyone know why this message comes up?

[Jim]

The message usually is displayed if the file <storeid>.aa (where <storeid> is the login name for the store) cannot be accessed for some reason. This can happen because of permissions on the file, the file has been removed, the file has been truncated or is corrupt, the authorization file for the store change, there is a problem in a form that submits the storeid as a parameter and it somehow gets duplicated and there are possibly other reason.

If the store has been moved the <storeid>.aa file in the sc directory, which is normally a symlink to the same file in the ss directory may have been lost in the move. So the symlink would need to be recreated.

It is possible that if disk space (or account quota) is exceeded that the file and other files may be truncated thus causing problems. In this case the diskspace must be increased and any truncated files restored from a backup.

As for permissions my test store has
-rw-r--r-- 1 apache apache 1377 Jan 3 09:31 jimsp2.aa

The user and group (apache) would be whatever user the webserver user is running as.

[loren_d_c]

It could also occur if your hosting provider is using NFS mounts or something similar for mounting the filesystem (sometimes something like this is done for 'cloud' type systems) and the filesystem file locking is not working on the filesystem. ShopSite cgi's use filesystem-level file locking on all data files that they open, so if file locking is not working on the networked filesystem, ShopSite will not function.

-Loren

[ccompass]

Is there a way to recreate the <storeid>.aa file? Nothing has changed with regards to the form and I've triple checked that I have the correct storeid in each of the forms for the individual items. I had my hosting provider check the permissions and they actually set them to 777 with no change, although the ShopSite administrative site seems to be working without issue now.

[ccompass]

So I'm able to get items into my cart. When I click on Checkout I can get to the actual Checkout page now. If I go back, and click on Checkout again, I get the error message. If I go back again and click Checkout it spits to the store page with all the items. Buggiest software I've run across in a long, long time. I'm at the point where I'm serious thinking of just scrapping ShopSite altogether and going with another solution. Lame!

[Jim]

There are tens of thousands of users using ShopSite without the problems you are experiencing so it isn't the ShopSite software that is having the problem it is something about where it is installed or how it is installed.
The storeid.aa file contains lots of settings that would be very difficult to recreate without having access to the server where the store is installed. If it has become corrupted the best solution is to try and restore it from a backup.

What is the url to the store, maybe we can see something from that end that is causing the problem.