Intalling Craft in the webroot folder I know this is bad practice but it's just for dev sites and there's no easy way around it with our current hosting provider. Anyway, I have my craft folder next to my index.php and $craftpath set to:

$craftPath = './craft';


Still I get this error: 

Could not find your craft/ folder. Please ensure that $craftPath is set correctly in /chroot/home/rizencre/rizenweb.com/html/terravant/index.php
I just tested it for you and this

$craftPath = './craft';


or this

$craftPath = 'craft';


does both work for me!

This probably doesn't help you much; I only wanted to confirm, that your $craftPath = './craft'; config should be working for your file structure.