Two errors show up often when Dashboard Builder is installed on Ubuntu (they do not appear on Windows with WAMP or XAMPP). Both have a clean fix, and neither needs chmod 777.
1. “Error! Folder /data/ is not writeable.”
Cause: on Ubuntu, Apache runs as the user www-data, not as the account that owns your files. If www-data is neither the owner nor in the owning group, it counts as “others” and cannot write to data. The 777 workaround works because it lets everyone write, but any local user or process could then change your data files.
Fix (run inside the app folder, for example /var/www/html/dashboardbuilder):
sudo chgrp -R www-data data store
sudo find data store -type d -exec chmod 775 {} +
sudo find data store -type f -exec chmod 664 {} +
sudo -u www-data touch data/_test && echo WRITE_OK && sudo rm data/_test
WRITE_OK means it works. If you get “Permission denied”, run namei -l /var/www/html/dashboardbuilder/data: each folder in the path needs execute permission for others (for example drwxr-xr-x).
2. “404 Not Found” when the app starts
Cause: Ubuntu’s default Apache configuration sets AllowOverride None for /var/www/, so .htaccess files are ignored. Dashboard Builder uses .htaccess rewrite rules to route its pages (for example app/qb), so they return 404.
Fix:
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo sed -i '/<Directory \/var\/www\/>/,/<\/Directory>/ s/AllowOverride None/AllowOverride All/' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
sudo apache2ctl configtest
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Still stuck? Post the output of sudo tail -n 60 /var/log/apache2/error.log and the path where you installed the app.
The full Ubuntu / Linux install, with copy buttons for every command, is on the download page: https://dashboardbuilder.net/download-free-dashboard
(On CentOS, Rocky Linux and Fedora the Apache user is apache, not www-data.)
.
