[ic] Interchange.cfg not found - permission denied problems?

[interchange at tvcables.co.uk]

Hi Folks,

I have been running 2 interchange catalogs on a Hostroute re-seller  
account for a couple of years using a local compiled perl. Up until 2  
weeks ago they always worked perfectly, now the admin UI cannot be  
accessed due to some kind of permission error when re-starting  
interchange. Interchange does start and serves pages ok but I cannot  
access the catalog admin anymore. The hosting company claims to have  
done nothing except apply 'regular patches', they have spent a week  
looking at it and have given up by saying they don't support  
interchange.

I have checked all files and permissions/ownership and they are all  
intact and correct and nothing has changed, I even changed some to 777  
to try and sort it out.

The daily cron job running expireall also now fails with a similar  
../.. permission denied error.

Below is the startup error, can someone please suggest what might  
cause this please and how it can be fixed?

Thanks,
Andy.

-bash-3.1$ ~/interchange/bin/interchange -r
Killing Interchange server 4243 with TERM.
Sending debug messages to debug.log.
Low traffic settings.
Calling UI...pwd: cannot open directory `../..': Permission denied
...UI is loaded...
Could not open global configuration file 'interchange.cfg': No such  
file or directory
Interchange V5.2.0
Configuring catalog ixos-cables...Using MySQL,  
DSN=dbi:mysql:wwwixos_wwwixos...done.
Interchange server started in UNIX mode(s) (process id 5210)