ratbox-services crashes when trying to register a user

[aalhadsaraf]

Binary package hint: ratbox-services-sqlite

Using Ubuntu 9.10 32bit

Steps:
1. Installed using sudo apt-get install ircd-ratbox
and
sudo apt-get install ratbox-services

2. Configured the config files pertaining to ircd-ratbox and ratbox-services so that the default connection
was established OK.

2010/2/26 19.03 Connection to server talk.test/6666 activated
2010/2/26 19.03 Connection to server talk.test established
2010/2/26 19.03 Connection to server talk.test completed

3. Connected using an IRC client and used
/msg userserv register abcuser password <email address hidden>

expected result: registering the user should succeed.
actual result: nothing happened.

sudo tail /var/log/ratbox-services/ratbox-services.log showed:

2010/2/26 19.04 fatal error: problem with db file: unable to open database file
2010/2/26 19.04 ratbox-services terminated: (problem with db file)

This problem seemed to be reported on debian in
http://lists.ratbox.org/pipermail/ircd-ratbox/2008-September/000841.html

However, the problem reporter did not follow up and respond to
http://lists.ratbox.org/pipermail/ircd-ratbox/2008-September/000842.html
.....
Does this mean you're using the debian packages, or did you compile from
source?
.....

This would perhaps be fixed with pulling in the latest stable release into the repository?

[Robert "Anaerin" Johnston (anaerin)]

Came across this myself, and can confirm it. I have also found the problem.

As Ratbox Services uses SQLIte, it attempts to create a journal file when it makes changes to it's DB (As reported by strace). But the folder the DB is in (/etc/ratbox-services) is owned by root and is not world-writable.

You can "Fix" the problem by setting /etc/ratbox-services a+w with chmod, but that's not exactly the most secure way of doing things.