sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/joomla

This opens gate for cracker as Apache is able to rewrite any file in Joomla instalaltion.

@Carlos,

Thanks for finding this article very helpful, yes I will surely include in the article steps to move Joomla configuration.php to server or will show how to make the server to write configuration file itself..

Please do include this in the original article. The article has been of great use, being a newbie in the Linux/Lamp/Joomla world I have followed the steps in all three related articles and it had worked great, except for the configuration.php issue (again it took me a day to figure out how to move the file to the centos box) and even then the system information said that all files were unwritable. Another two days later and I found this comment and now all is well. Please add it to the article as this is so useful.

thanks.