I have a web based application that works using Apache 2.0, Php 5.0, & mySQL. Prior installations has always allowed the application (via PHP) to access documents outside the documentroot. Example: The documentroot is set to '/var/www/html', I want to have the application access a file in '/var/www/secret' directory. Through php I coded it like this:
<?php require_once('../secret/dbaseSettings.php'); ?>

I have not changed anything in the application, I have only upgraded the operating system and the version of the supporting applications. Now the web base application cannot access the files outside the documentroot. I have checked the permissions for the files and the directories, they are the same as with the previous installations.

Can anyone point me into the direction of fixing this problem?

I'm guessing you have an open_basedir restriction in effect. Put a phpinfo() page in the webspace to check for that. If there are directories listed, that is the issue. Change open_basedir to none in php.ini and see if that resolves the problem.

Thank you zaichik for responding so quickly. I checked the open_basedir and it is commented out. Any other ideas?