Please HELP : general problem : fatal error ...

hi, this problem slows me down : every file, which have to be included, reports a "Fatal error: Failed opening required 'anyfile.inc' in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/medinet/ch05/menu.php3" (or other directories, not only medinet) The complete file looks like that : <?php require('common.inc'); ?> <?php affy_header('Administrative Menu') ?> <h1>Administrative Menu</h1> <ol> <li><a href="connect.php3">Create Database Connection</a></li> </ol> <?php affy_footer() ?> and the directory ch05 contains these files : (inluded owners and rights) -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 321 May 23 17:26 common.inc* -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 321 May 23 17:26 common.phps* -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1109 May 23 17:26 connect01.php3* -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1109 May 23 17:26 connect01.phps* -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 904 May 23 17:26 connect02.php3* -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 904 May 23 17:26 connect02.phps* -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 204 May 23 17:26 menu.php3* -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 204 May 23 17:26 menu.phps* It doesn't matter, if I write the examples with hands or read in the the files from anywhere. Does anybody know, what causes this behavior ? In the meantime this problem is really urgent. Have installed all the necessary files like apache, mysql, php and anything else a few times now, but that cannot be the reason. All was going well during ./configure, make and make install. Maybe, I have failed to notice something ? How is it with user-rights ? what I should have here ? who should be the owner of the needed includes ? which rights this user should have ? In one case I was able to solve the problem : there was a forumdb.txt and there was NO rights for "others". After changing to rw to others, the file was writeable - the script was running well. But in this case - what can I do here ? Am hoping, that we are able to find the reason for this behavior as soon as possible. Thanks in advance Hans Schneidhofer