suPHP and Drupal 6

We use suPHP on all our servers because it makes them so much more secure.

That said, suPHP and Drupal 6 don't always get along well with one another. The Image Cache module seems to be especially problematic on this point.

The essential problem is that when the system creates a new directory, it does so using the wrong permission setting, or chmod. In our case, the system sets directory permissions to 700 making their contents inaccessible.

Here's a little command you can run to clear the issue up manually. Just navigate to /sites/default and then run this little gem:

This tells Linux to change the contents of the files directory from 700 to 755 (the magic number for directories on our servers.