A few questions

[EricMagnus]

My web host, doesn't allow scripts to run in a folder in the WWW area with writable permissions .  Do the 2 folders that you CHMOD to 755 run scripts in them?

My host will set up a virtual directory that will point to a dir out of my WWW area?  Would that work?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Joachim Müller]

should be working (never tried actually): if your webhost sets up a "virtual dir" (i.e. a symlink or shortcut) this should be enough. It's recommended that the virtual dir is within the coppermine folder (preferably even called "albums", just to be on the safe side).

GauGau

[EricMagnus]

IM completely new to this, and my host is no help.  Are scripts executed out of the album or include folders? Or are they just writen to?  Any help would be appreciated.

[Joachim Müller]

there are no scripts executed in the albums dir (in fact, there are none in it), coppermine only needs write access there because that's the place where the intermediate pics and thumbnails get stored.

GauGau

[EricMagnus]

and the include folder?  there are scripts in it.  Do they get executed there or are the read from a different script?

[Joachim Müller]

you need write access in the include script only once during installation (and after that you won't need write access there anymore). The scripts in the include dir get executed, but if you can't establish write access on this dir, you can manually create a file in it called config.inc.php (for the contents of this file, refer to the file config.inc.php.sample that comes with the package). The installer also creates a file called install.lock in the include dir once the install was successfully run. This file disables the installer to be run a second time. As a workaround, you can create the file include/install.lock manually or delete the installer (install.php in the coppermine root directory) manually.
I think this discussion is very theoretical, why don't you go ahead and just try; report back if you encounter any problems.

GauGau