Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'CacheException' with message 'Cache engine _cake_core_ is not properly configured.'

Hi ,
I am fairly new to cakePHP.
To give a background, i am trying to install cakePHP on a LAMP on centos 7, which is a VM in xenserver.
I have tried giving 777 permission to the whole folder, tried changing ownership to every possible user, but cannot get this error to go away. I am turning to the cakePHP forum in hope of finding a solution, i have exhausted all the resources on the net , lot of people said it was a problem of permissions or there was a folder missing, but tried everything nothing seems to work. Here is the error that i am having i hope someone can help.

Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘CacheException’ with message ‘Cache engine cake_core is not properly configured.’ in /var/www/html/phtagr/cakephp/lib/Cake/Cache/Cache.php:181 Stack trace: #0 /var/www/html/phtagr/cakephp/lib/Cake/Cache/Cache.php(151): Cache::_buildEngine(‘cake_core’) #1 /var/www/html/phtagr/Config/core.php(420): Cache::config(‘cake_core’, Array) #2 /var/www/html/phtagr/cakephp/lib/Cake/Core/Configure.php(72): include(’/var/www/html/p…’) #3 /var/www/html/phtagr/cakephp/lib/Cake/bootstrap.php(177): Configure::bootstrap(true) #4 /var/www/html/phtagr/webroot/index.php(129): include(’/var/www/html/p…’) #5 /var/www/html/phtagr/index.php(25): require(’/var/www/html/p…’) #6 {main} thrown in /var/www/html/phtagr/cakephp/lib/Cake/Cache/Cache.php on line 181