What's going on here?

[epsilon234]

A customer of mine installed phpbb through cpanel, and it always gives him this error on every page of phpbb. It simply doesn't work with his account.

Warning: Unknown(): open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/home/meta/public_html/forums/admin/index.php) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/metahou:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp) in Unknown on line 0

Warning: Unknown(/home/meta/public_html/forums/admin/index.php): failed to open stream: Operation not permitted in Unknown on line 0

Warning: (null)(): Failed opening '/home/meta/public_html/forums/admin/index.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in Unknown on line 0

What does this mean? It does this even if I delete all of it, then upload a fresh phpbb.

[Flaming_cows]

At a glance I would guess there is a permissions problem. Try setting all the folders to CHMOD 755 if you haven't yet.

[Drexion]

The 'open_basedir restriction' is a hosting restriction. There may be another reason, but some hosts use it as a means of helping to prevent malicious scripts from being run. (especially in certain directories)

Basically the folder which you have uploaded the phpBB forum to has this restriction in effect - there is nothing we can do, you have to contact your host for support. (or possibly move the 'phpBB2' folder to a location not under this restriction?)