Sorry, this installer requires PHP! after following tutorial

[thepinkanator95]

So I followed the CentOS 6 DigitalOcean tutorial in order to create a SimpleMachines Forum after several failed attempts trying on my own. I followed this tutorial exactly, copying/pasting commands, and I am still getting the error "Sorry, this installer requires PHP!". The "php -v" command shows that php is installed (version 5.3.3). After this many failed attempts I am unsure how to proceed.

[Kindred]

It sounds like, whatever your installer says, php is either not installed or not activates

[thepinkanator95]

I can verify it is installed with the "php -v" command. Digital Ocean doesn't have anything to activate/deactivate php on the server. I just have followed the tutorial and it I can't get it to find the php. Is it supposed to be in a directory other than "/var/www/html"? That's the default apache directory.

[Kindred]

This is beyond smf support.  You would really need to follow up with your host.

Since smf can not detect php, it can not be installed... and the issue has to be on the hosting side of things

[Colin]

What distro and webserver are you using?

If you want a start to finish tutorial for CentOS6 I wrote for digital ocean you can take a look here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-simple-machines-forum-on-centos-6

[thepinkanator95]

I figured it out.

@Colin: That is the tutorial I followed.

For anyone else that is having this problem, here is the solution. Type "chmod 777 install.php" and then it will run. Delete install.php after you have finished installing and then type "chmod 744 index.php" to get the website running. There are likely others smarter than me that might be able to put more secure permissions but that's how I got it to work.

[Kindred]

That suggests that you have your chmod permissions poorly configured and/or php badly configured as to what/who is the owner of php and php-run files on the server

files should generally be 644 or 664 and directories 755 or 775