Installation Not working

[BobMallett]

Hello & Help,

My first look at Serendipity and I'm disappointed as I can't install. I get the admin page

http://www.kneedeepinknightsbridge.com/ ... _admin.php

I've tried simple & Expert installations. Everything says Yes on the check page except

mbstring = No
Imagemagick binary Not found [?]

safe_mode OFF OFF
register_globals OFF ON [?]
magic_quotes_gpc OFF ON [?]
magic_quotes_runtime OFF OFF
session.use_trans_sid OFF ON [?]
allow_url_fopen ON ON
file_uploads ON ON
post_max_size 10M 8M [?]
upload_max_filesize 10M 2M [?]

Permissions have been set

I fill in all the info press complete and get page not found. Notice the ? at the end

http://www.kneedeepinknightsbridge.com/ ... _admin.php?

It's not my browser - I tried Firefox - same thing. I checked my database and there are 21 tables created.

How can I diagnose this problem? PHP - 4.4.2 MySQL - 3.23.58.

Thanks

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

When I open that page now, I get several errors that files could not be read.

Did you change anything in the configuration, did you change any paths - or did you simply hit "Go"?

If you get a "page not found" it might be due to your Apache webserver filtering certain requests. Do you know if mod_Security or suhosin is in effect?

Do you have a PHP or Apache error log that you could look into?

Best regards,
Garvin

[BobMallett]

Hi,

Thanks for looking, I was probably just reuploading the files just to make sure all was OK. No problems with FTP transfer.

Do you want the username and password for the db? There are some logs on the webserver showing file does not exist entries

Thanks

Bob

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

A possible problem could be the URL Rewriting. Try to pick the expert installation, and chose "None" for the option "URL Rewriting". See if it installs then properly?

If it doesn't, to reinstall serendipity you must simply delete the file "serendipity_config_local.inc.php" and ".htaccess" it will be able to re-install. For a full reinstallation, you'll need to also drop all DB tables manually, though.

Please try if that works, if not, I can offer you to have a look at the install with the given username/password. Contact me via PM in that case.

HTH,
Garvin

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Bob supplied me with FTP access, and I checked out the page.

Turns out the PHP function 'fsockopen' produces a fatal error or segfault on his machine during the installation. Serendipity uses that function to test if a server supports .htaccess files. But if the installation fails because of a fatal error on that step, the installer magic cannot continue.

Usually, that function should never painfully fail. If it does, this usually is because of very strict firewalling that immediately stalls local connections and make a process fail. Specific errors should be available in the server's syslog, php errorlog or apache errorlog.

I bypassed this whole functionality on Bobs installation by editing the include/functions_installer.inc.php function, and patching it so that a failsafe file (.installer_detection_failsafe) is created. When this file exists, the next serendipity installation try (like when the user hits F5) will recognize that file and not try to create a socket connection. This improvement has also been committed into the official serendipity trunk for the next version.

Bob, one note: It can be that you experience similiar problems like this with other plugins for serendipity, like the flickr plugin or others that use network connectivity. Your hosts seems to block them completely, and this will allow things like Spartacus not to work. Bear that in mind if you ever face a similiar problem - but those should be circumventable by deleting the offending plugin.

HTH,
Garvin

[BobMallett]

Garvin Thanks for the fix and the explanantion, I'll try and find out why php on this server produces that error.

Just incase I need to reinstall did you just patch

include/functions_installer.inc.php?

Thanks again for a fabulously fast response.

Bob

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Exactly, I patched that file. I did this, to be exact:

http://svn.berlios.de/viewcvs/serendipi ... 08&r2=1633

Thanks again for a fabulously fast response.

You're welcome! I'm sorry for your initial trouble. Until now I've not heard of such a problem. I'm glad you beared with me and were kind enough to provide me with access so that I could fix the offending code.

Have fun,
Garvin

[BobMallett]

Hi,

I'm just trying to install a new deployment of Serendipity on the same server but under a different domain, and I've run into exactly the same problem as before ie

http://www.newlifeinnottinghill.com/ser ... _admin.php

follow the simple option click complete and I get a page not found message at

http://www.newlifeinnottinghill.com/ser ... _admin.php?

This is v1.1.4 as opposed to 1.1.1

I have not patched the file as it seems to be a different version and the line numbers for the fixes do not correspond. If I send you the FTp details as before do you think you could take a look?

Thanks

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Please try to install the 1.2-beta, it should be fixed in our 1.2 release branch only.

If that fails as well, I can have another look, yes.

Regards,
Garvin

[BobMallett]

Thanks I downloaded the beta 1.2 versions and the same thing occurs. It's bizarre. Also I noticed that on the Expert install page there is no Complete installation option at the bottom of the screen, there is on the simple option but as before this returns page not found.

The current setup page checks out OK

PHP installation
Operating system Linux 2.4.9-e.57smp, i686
Webserver SAPI apache
PHP version >= 4.1.2 Yes, 4.4.7
Database extensions MySQL, PostgreSQL
Session extension Yes
PCRE extension Yes
GDlib extension Yes
OpenSSL extension Yes
mbstring extension No [?]
iconv extension Yes
zlib extension Yes
Imagemagick binary Not found [?]

php.ini configuration
Recommended Actual
safe_mode OFF OFF
register_globals OFF ON [?]
magic_quotes_gpc OFF ON [?]
magic_quotes_runtime OFF OFF
session.use_trans_sid OFF ON [?]
allow_url_fopen ON ON
file_uploads ON ON
post_max_size 10M 10M
upload_max_filesize 10M 10M

Permissions
/customersites/3/home/httpd/vhosts/newlifeinnottinghill.com/httpdocs/serendipity/ Writable
/customersites/3/home/httpd/vhosts/newlifeinnottinghill.com/httpdocs/serendipity/templates_c Writable
/customersites/3/home/httpd/vhosts/newlifeinnottinghill.com/httpdocs/serendipity/archives/ Writable
/customersites/3/home/httpd/vhosts/newlifeinnottinghill.com/httpdocs/serendipity/uploads/ Writable
Execute Imagemagick binary Not found [?]

I'll send you a private message with the FTP details, if you have the time to look I'd appreciate it.

Regards

Bob Mallett

[BobMallett]

I gave it some thought and decided to delete the .htaccess file and make a new empty one with write permissions. The only entry in the one that was originally created was the 404 DirectoryIndex entry.

After I deleted this and then ran the simple install with a new blank .htaccess file all was OK. This file now has the following lines only

php_value register_globals off
php_value session.use_trans_sid 0

Everything seems now to be workig well, so thanks.

I'm going to post this up on the main Forum as well because I want you to know that despite the installation problems I've had on both deployments which are probably down to the server config the software has worked really well, is clearly well written and robust. Keep up the good work and thanks for your prompt help.

Bob Mallett