Printful do not connect to prestashop over a virtualmin hosted prestashop

[Xena]

Hello!

Im using a dedicated server with webmin 1.941 / virtualmin 6.08 on Ubuntu 18.04.3.
I have created a virtual server and installed in it Prestashop 1.7.6.4, running with PHP 7.1.33.

I want to connect Printful account to my prestashop, but when I follow the process I get an error message

Dang it

PrestaShop connect error: 
Could not connect to https://******.com/api. 
Please double-check the API key and its permissions. 
Full error: Client error: 
`GET https://********.com/api?output_format=XML` resulted 
in a `401 Unauthorized` response: 401 Unauthorized

the “**********” stands for my prestashop domain url on virtualmin.

So far I have searched google and figured out that it is not a prestashop issue nor prihtful issue. It is a server webmin/virtualmin issue but I am unable to figure out where to look or what to do.

Also something might give a clue, I uploaded a prestashop requirements verification script, it has a default password setup in it, when the script is called it pop up a window where I need to enter this default user/password, but for some reasons this is not working, when I type the user and password, the window keep prompting asking for credentials. This issue seems to be related to the previous one, probably some issue related to http/https authetification or something.
here is that script:
https://pastebin.com/vN1CzpVH

there is also a htaccess file given by prestashop but I do not understand the content, when I delete this file, the error become 404 when I try to connect prinful, so there is maybe something to do here :
https://pastebin.com/Tp6Qtm3M

I also use letsencrypt SSL embedded in virtualmin.

How can I fix this problem please ?

Edit:
I tried to put the url that Printful call, in the web navigator : https://**********.com/api?output_format=XML
this is resulting a popup asking for user/password, I have no idea why, here nothing work, I have tried all what is possible, anyway it is not supposed to ask for user/password, so this is why the connexion is failing. Still I don’t know where to look to solve this

[Xena]

Problem solved but I’m not sure its a good practise or safe.

I went in Virtualmin/my domain/server configuration/website options and I change the PHP script execution mode from FCGid to Apache mod_php

This have fixed the issue, I figured out this by reading somebody’s comment in PHP manual !

[Joe]

It is safe (sort of) if it is no a shared server. mod_php is not safe in a multi-tenant environment. But, if everybody on the server is trusted, it’s fine(ish), though the performance and resource usage cost is somewhat high.

[Xena]

Hello Joe
thank you, I’m alone in the server so I can consider it safe then.
Also I had to re-attribute all the public_html and its content to www-data:www-data otherwise prestashop would not work, is this fine ?

[Joe]

@Xena

Also I had to re-attribute all the public_html and its content to www-data:www-data otherwise prestashop would not work, is this fine ?

There is no other choice, if you’re using mod_php. mod_php runs as the Apache user (which is why it is not safe on a multi-tenant system).