[solved] when I access "Install.php" I get a blank page

knightmare · December 10, 2004, 02:00:12 AM

I'm traying to migrate my phpBB forum to smf, so I first want to test in my computer.
I'm running:
SuSE 9.2 Pro
apache2-2.0.50-7.2
mysql-4.0.21-4.2
php4-4.3.8-8

I uncompressed the compressed file in ~/public_html/smf
when I open "hxxp:localhost/~user/smf/install.php [nonactive]" I get a blank page. I already have a local copy of my entire forum working in my computer, so I know php and mysql are configured an running. I uploaded the "smf" folder to the server where my forum is and there I can see the installation screen. I don't do the migration there cause my DB is running ou of space (is at 80%)

what may be the cause that it works on the server (lycos) and not in my computer?

thanks

[Unknown] · December 10, 2004, 02:15:25 AM

A blank screen, huh? Could you create a phpinfo.php on your test server, and then save the output as an html page and give me a link to it?

What is phpinfo.php? (note your situation is a bit different, because I can't access your localhost.)

I would guess this is some issue with configuration, but I can't think of anything that would cause a blank screen. I definitely consider this a bug (it should always show at least an error message...) Can you look at your error logs? You'll want to tail /var/log/messages (I think that's the path...) and /var/log/httpd or /var/log/apache2 or similar. This assumes you have PHP configured as a PHP module, not CGI.

-[Unknown]

knightmare · December 10, 2004, 03:41:43 PM

hi, thanks for you time.

here's a link to the copy of my phpinfo "hxxp:usuarios.lycos.es/idpeaceb/phpinfo.html [nonactive]"

and here is the output of my error_log

[Fri Dec 10 14:37:46 2004] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] File does not exist: /srv/www/htdocs/favicon.ico
[Fri Dec 10 14:37:47 2004] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] File does not exist: /srv/www/htdocs/favicon.ico
[Fri Dec 10 14:37:47 2004] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] File does not exist: /srv/www/htdocs/favicon.ico

Why is install.php requesting that file???

thanks

[Unknown] · December 10, 2004, 08:27:32 PM

That's your browser, not install.php. So, I guess it's not logging anything.

Can you try turning on, in php.ini, display_startup_errors and log_errors?

Did any other forum software install properly?

-[Unknown]

knightmare · December 10, 2004, 10:17:56 PM

I turned those options and nothing... I still get a blank page

There's nothing in the error_log... and in the access_log I get this:
127.0.0.1 - - [10/Dec/2004:20:42:38 -0600] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 1042 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"
127.0.0.1 - - [10/Dec/2004:20:42:48 -0600] "GET /~carlo/foro/install.php HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"
127.0.0.1 - - [10/Dec/2004:20:42:48 -0600] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 1042 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10"

when I run index.php through the command line I get this
carlo@linux:~/public_html/foro> php index.php
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "hxxp:www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd [nonactive]">
<html>
<head>
<title>Connection Problems.</title>
</head>
<body>
<h3>Connection Problems</h3>
Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later.
</body>
</html>

but when I run install.php I get nithing.....

I was able to install without any problem phpBB

thanks

knightmare · December 11, 2004, 01:18:37 AM

I was trying to find out why I don't get any output from install.php when I run it from the command line

I was adding some echoes trying to find what is going on and I found that the problem starts in line 134

Code Select

if (!isset($_GET['obgz']))
	{
		//echo "hola";//////////////////////////////////////////
		ob_start();
		//echo "hola";
		@session_start();///////////////////////////////////
		//echo "hola";
			
	}
	else
	{
	
		ob_start('ob_gzhandler');
		session_start();

you can see that I added 3 echoes. If I uncomment them I receive the output from the first two. If I comment "@session_start();" I can see in the browser the upper banner and a gray page... but also the following error

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: session_save_path() in /home/carlo/public_html/foro/install.php on line 331

so I suppose the problem is with that function. I tried to skip that if by forcing the script to enter the else portion but got a blank page with this message

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: session_start() in /home/carlo/public_html/foro/install.php on line 147

I hope this info helps

[Unknown] · December 11, 2004, 09:56:30 PM

Sounds like /tmp is probably not writable. Replace @session_start() with session_start()... (remove the @.)

-[Unknown]

knightmare · December 12, 2004, 12:00:40 AM

Ok , after chatting with unknown by messenger I was able to find and solve the problem.
in case somebody else has this problem in the future , here's the solution (it should work in other distros):
SuSE's PHP rpm comes with session disable (you can see if you have it disable by finding '--disable-session' on your phpinfo.php under configure command)

you need to download php souces from hxxp:www.php.net [nonactive]
you need to have apache2-devel installed

extract php sources and do:

Code Select


>cd php-4.3.9 
>./configure --prefix=/usr --datadir=/usr/share/php --mandir=/usr/share/man --bindir=/usr/bin --libdir=/usr/share --includedir=/usr/include --sysconfdir=/etc --with-_lib=lib --with-config-file-path=/etc --with-exec-dir=/usr/lib/php/bin --disable-debug --enable-inline-optimization --enable-memory-limit --enable-magic-quotes --enable-safe-mode --enable-sigchild --disable-ctype --without-mysql --disable-cli --without-pear --with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs2-prefork i586-suse-linux 
>make
>su
#make install

after this reload apache and it should work

thanks a lot to [Unknown]

selyb · February 08, 2005, 11:59:38 PM

could someone do the same for me please?

i have two servers running ATM
i have SMF working on an abyss server using PHP5
abyss doesnt have virtual hosts or ssl so i want to change servers and i cant get SMF to work any other way than with abyss
also, i dont want to use apache if i can help it

hxxp:www.selyb.com/forum/phpinfo.php [nonactive]

this is the working install

hxxp:www.selyb.com:800/forum/phpinfo.php [nonactive]

this is appWebServer 1.2.3 using the php5 module built from php 5.0.0 with hxxp:www.appwebserver.org/products/appWeb/doc/guide/php.html [nonactive]

btw, every time i try to use php4 (installation or the appWeb module, i get this

Code Select

Connection Problems
Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later.

i would try pi3 but it only supports php4 and i get that error with that server as well

[Unknown] · February 09, 2005, 01:48:07 AM

Quote from: selyb on February 08, 2005, 11:59:38 PM
Code Select Expand
Connection Problems Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later.

i would try pi3 but it only supports php4 and i get that error with that server as well

Interesting. SMF has not been tested on the server software you are using, and is not (necessarily) known to work. That said, it should work on said servers. Is there any way to use PHP 5.0.3 (not the release candidate, which is older and less stable) with the server you're trying to use? I'm not sure if SMF is compatible with that (beta) version of PHP.

Is there a specific reason you're using these less-popular servers? I'm not asking because you shouldn't; to the contrary, I plan to download them both and test SMF with them as soon as I have a chance. However, Apache usually fits many people's needs quite well, is all, and would probably work at least for now while I check on the compatiblity.

SMF should work fine with PHP 4 and PHP 5. Did the installer work, or did you not get even that far? Or did you try to copy the files over without reinstalling? (which should theoretically be okay, if they're on the same server, since MySQL would serve both anyway.)

Please post your responses in a new topic. Posting in an old (and resolved) topic often ends up getting your request ignored for longer than it would be otherwise.

-[Unknown]

[Unknown] · February 09, 2005, 02:34:18 AM

Oh, and about PI3Web handling PHP 5:

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=427733

-[Unknown]

[Unknown] · February 09, 2005, 04:15:51 AM

And, I found the problem. Turn off output buffering, I believe this is a bug in the versions of PHP appWebServer comes with.

-[Unknown]

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[solved] when I access "Install.php" I get a blank page