Drupal Hosts : file permissions: problems moving to new host

Hostgator web hosting is our best host for drupal. Sign up with our recommended host for drupal here

This is a drupal question asked by Anti on 09 April 2009

I just got a VPS account.
I zipped/downloaded my original drupal install, and uploaded/unpacked it on the new server.
After transferring the DB, it all seemed to work ok.

However, I’m having a hard time with the ‘file system’ setting.
On going to admin -> site config -> file system, drupal said ’sites/default/files’ is unwritable.
It works ok if I chmod /files to 777, but obviously this isn’t desirable.

The first thing I tried was to rename /files to /files_bak
Drupal then recreated a new writable /files directory with an htaccess file inside.
But when I tried to move all the files from files_bak into the new directory, I got permission errors.
Similarly, if I try to edit the /files or files/.htaccess (including chmodding them), I also get permission errors:

FileOp Failure on: /home/USER/public_html/sites/default/files: Operation not permitted

Advice on how to proceed?

I think it is connected with the ‘owner’ and/or ‘group’ permissions.
Or the fact that the files were created on another server and then moved.
But I have no idea about any of that stuff – the most I’ve ever had to do before is simple chmod.

And it’s freaking me out that I can’t edit the newly-created /files directory; surely I’m the owner of that?

More info at this drupal node or sign up with the popular choice for drupal hosting