First of all after moving framework out of the webroot directory, you must check if the variables in index.php, index-test.php, protected/config/*.php, protected/tests/bootstrap.php files point to the correct framework path. Then you must make assets and runtime folder accessible by web server (for example chmod 777).
I have the same problem working with a vps in Centos 5 (using parallels), if I move the framework outside the webroot, and I change permissions as required, and paths inside index.php I get the 500 internal error
I’ve been doing this myself so I thought I would add my standard procedure for setting this up.
Determine the include paths for PHP
I typically do this by creating a phpinfo.php that I load on the server.
<?php
echo phpinfo();
?>
Browsing to phpinfo.php, I search for include_path. Mine lists the following
.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear
From there I extract Yii into the php include path.
In my case this was /usr/share/php.
I extract with the full release name (ie. yii-1.1.10.r3566, then create a symbolic link so that I can upgrade to future versions by changing the link without any changes to my Yii apps.
ln -s yii-1.1.10.r3566 yii
I perform these as root (sudo in Ubuntu) and the resulting permissions I get are
Finally, I set the appropriate paths with my Yii app (index.php, index-test.php, protected/config/*.php, protected/tests/bootstrap.php) using the absolute path.