Blank Page after installation

[AlGates]

Hello,

I know that this problem already was mentioned here a few times, but I tried each solution and maybe got a few steps forward, but still it doesn't work so well.

After the installtion, I had a blank page, when trying to go to the main page.
I activated the error-showing function of PHP and got unfortunatelly nothing.
After a few software-upgrades, at least I got the admin-site up and running and have access to the configuration menu. But even there, if I try to access the media - database or if I want to add new media files, I get a blank page. The rest seems to work. Even new entries are possible - they are just not shown in the blog afterwards, because there is just a blank site.

I had a serendipity 0.8.5 up and running and wanted to upgrade to 1.3.1, but this doesn't seem very simple.

What information can I provide you with, so we find any solutions for this problem? By the way - the php-logging got NO error messages. And the server logs (SAMBAR Server) showed no error messages as well.

Help!

[judebert]

Can we have a URL? It might be helpful.

Upgrade is usually painless, as long as you get all the files correctly uploaded and the database user has the correct privileges. Blank web pages are usually an indication that files were corrupted during the upload.

Of course, that usually gives us a PHP error message, as well.

Sometimes the blank page is an indication that the hosting service is forbidding something. Some of them have restrictions on file permissions, and some have .htacess restrictions.

The first step for you is to try re-uploading the files. Then take a look at the permissions on index.php and try changing it to something more restrictive, like 755. If neither of those helps, rename your .htaccess to htaccess.old. Let us know what happens so we can come up with further ideas.

Good luck!

[AlGates]

Hello,

thanks so far.

First of all, I tried both: Upgrading the old version and setting up a complete new version.

Unfortunatelly, I cannot give you any URL at the moment, because I tried to set it up on my notebook for a first test.
I have here a MySQL Database, PHP and a webserver running. With this being my notebook, I am admin and GOD in terms of this.
So changing something here, shoud be no problem.

I think, I can exclude an error during transfer, because I downloaded the archive and just decompressed it. (I did that three times, just to get sure, that it's no transfer error).
I checked the rights and changed them to 755.
I eliminated the .htaccess, which had no effect.

If you need any file-contents or anything about my configuration, just let me know. I will check it and post it here.

Thanks so far and maybe you have some more ideas about this problem.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

If you're admin, can you make sure that the php.ini option for display_errors is On, and error_reporting is E_ALL?

Regards,
Garvin

[AlGates]

Hi!

Both settings were already made.

Best regards,
Alex

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Can you please show us the output of a phpinfo() script?

Regards,
Garvin

[AlGates]

Here you are:
http://algates.de/php.pdf

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Hm, that's really too strange. The only reason why you would see a blank page is because a PHP parse error could happen in one of the files that are included by s9y with "@include".

So there are some ways to go from here: Either try to install a fresh serendipity, just to see if it works on your server, in a new database. You should download a fresh tarball/zipfile from serendipity, this might rule out a possible file corruption on your upload.

If file errors are not the case, you might want to search all PHP files frmo serendipity for "@include" and "@require" and change them to "include" and "require" to reveal those hidden error messages...

Regards,
Garvin

[AlGates]

Hi,

I did that now and got a Log-File from PHP containing this:

[29-Jul-2008 17:14:20] PHP Warning: include_once(C:/Programme/sambar70/docs/blog2/templates/mt3-chalkboard/config.inc.php) [<a href='function.include-once'>function.include-once</a>]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:\Programme\sambar70\docs\blog2\include\functions_smarty.inc.php on line 963

[29-Jul-2008 17:14:20] PHP Warning: include_once() [<a href='function.include'>function.include</a>]: Failed opening 'C:/Programme/sambar70/docs/blog2/templates/mt3-chalkboard/config.inc.php' for inclusion (include_path='.;C:\php5\pear;C:\Programme\sambar70\docs\blog2/bundled-libs/;C:\Programme\sambar70\docs\blog2/bundled-libs/Smarty/libs/;C:\Programme\sambar70\docs\blog2/;') in C:\Programme\sambar70\docs\blog2\include\functions_smarty.inc.php on line 963


A little bit strange. There is indeed no config.inc.php in the mt3-chalkboard-folder.
By the way: After changing the skin to this, I lost the admin-access as well.
How can I restore the standard-skin? Can I just change it in the database somewhere?

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Hm, that error message is okay -- actually it's the only @include call that does make sense, because not all templates have this config.inc.php file. To not perform a second file lookup, we simply unconditoinally include that file.

Thus, this error is unrelated and does not cause any issues...

By the way: After changing the skin to this, I lost the admin-access as well.
How can I restore the standard-skin? Can I just change it in the database somewhere?

Hm, changing the template should not be related to any admin access.

You can change the template name in the serendipity_config database table, the "template" config var.

Your installation really sounds messed up in a non-standard way. I'm afraid I might only be able to help if I got my hands on this installation via FTP.

Regards,
Garvin

[AlGates]

Thank you so much for your help!

Just as an information for everyone having similar problems:
I had a php-developer-Version (5.3x) running on my system which made some trouble. I installed version 5.2.x and now it works perfectly.

Thanks again!
Alex

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Phew! This was a tough one to crack!

Regards,
Garvin