EasyPopulate and Image Uploading

[mgrooten]

I installed a new online store and ran into two issues I have not seen in multiple previous installs.
EasyPopulate does not work properly. I downloaded an EP master and then uploaded the populated EP file. No error message, no results in the database, no response from the system whatsoever. When I FTP the same file to the TEMP folder and then upload the products, this does work fine. So is seam s to me that the info is good and the file is good.
I created a catalog/temp folder and set permissions to 777.

After loading a set of products with dummy images I tried to replace the image with the proper picture manually product by product, but the server does not pull the image from my PC. In edit mode I select the image and in preview the old image appears. The system responds with "warning: no file uploaded". Again when I FTP the image to the server and insert the product with the new image via the temp folder, it does find the image and displays it. However a duplicate product is inserted, not an update of the old product.
The image folder has permission set at 777.

It seems like the server can not/ will not read anything from the "outside world". Permission issue? Any idea?

[mgrooten]

The problems were solved. It turned out that the hosting provider by default disables the /tmp directory for new websites, this as an attempt to keep out hackers. Any uploads of EasyPopulate and any image replacements from "outside" were handicapped by this restriction.