We have experienced a strange issue with our Drupal filebrowser module installation. We’re getting repeated error messages about open_basedir restriction in effect.

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# warning: file_exists() [function.file-exists]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/file-folder.png) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/username:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp) in /home/username/public_html/modules/filebrowser/filebrowser.module on line 338.
# warning: file_exists() [function.file-exists]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/file-default.png) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/username:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp) in /home/username/public_html/modules/filebrowser/filebrowser.module on line 338.

After several checks on our account setup we found the issue was caused by our configuration in filebrowser module. There are only two values to set for Filebrowser: “Root directory” and “Icons directory”. Since we forgot to set the value for “Icons directory” and left it empty, this caused the open_basedir restriction issue. Because the module couldn’t find the location of the icon directory, it tries to blame the open_basedir restriction settings.