Package Manager - All Mod installs fail with - Modification parse error

[bork]

Fair enough

I've actually just been on holiday for a week and still get the same errors so it's not that.

It's a shame that one of the potentially greatest features of SMF (the package manager) is so flakey.

From doing a lot of reading there are many other people in the same boat as me, ie "modification parse error" and no apparant solution.

Is there any way of finding out whether this problem is being worked on for the final 1.1 release? If it's always going to be this way then I will have to move to another brand of forum software which is a shame, because everything else about SMF is excellent.

[bork]

Anyone else got any new info about how to solve this? I know there are *lots* of us here with the identical problem.

I thought I cracked it when I realised that gzip wasn't unzipping the files correctly into the "temp" directory. All the file sizes were 0.

So, I then tried:
- creating the "Packages/temp" directory manually
- unzipping the mod files locally and then FTPing them to the temp directory
- CHMODing the whole temp directory to 777

What happens then is that there is no further "modification parse error", and the forum states that the modification has installed successfully.

However, when I come to use any of the new modification functionality, it's not there....ie the mod didn't really install at all - very frustrating!

I've been looking into the code in "Sources/Packages.php" and it does look like this code is not the final code, but I'm unable to decifer what is actually failing due to my limited PHP knowledge.

[青山 素子]

It isn't a code issue, Package manager works great for lots of people (myself included across three different environments). I'm inclined to point to either some PHP error (maybe bzip2/gzip/zip support is loaded but broken?) or a config issue (safe_mode, open_basedir, etc). I'd be happy to poke around and see the cause of the error, but as I'm not experiencing it, I can't diagnose it.

[shaglaptop]

Its fustrating, yes. But you didnt say if you waited...and from teh time I posted, you didnt wait long enough.

I just can't see how waiting would affect the installation of packages 

This might sound funny, but if your using IE, try another browser.  I was having parser errors with IE, and *poof*, used Opera, and everything istalled no issues...

shag

[bork]

I'm using Firefox, so will try IE...

[bork]

It isn't a code issue, Package manager works great for lots of people (myself included across three different environments). I'm inclined to point to either some PHP error (maybe bzip2/gzip/zip support is loaded but broken?) or a config issue (safe_mode, open_basedir, etc). I'd be happy to poke around and see the cause of the error, but as I'm not experiencing it, I can't diagnose it.

My open_basedir is set to "no value" - is that bad?

Safe mode is off, and both zlib and bzip2 are showing as loaded, but they are oldish versions.

The thing is, although there is a problem with decompression, that's not what is stopping the mods installing since I have already tried installing after manually uploading the unzipped mod files to the temp directory.

[bork]

Ok, here's my last post on this matter:

- The Package installation problem *is* related to the server environment.
- However, it would still be nice to know what is causing this problem - better error messages / graceful failure of mod installation?

I got round the problem by:

- Building and equivalent copy of my server in a VMWare virtual machine
- Installed the mods into VMWare (they all work perfectly)
- Upload the modded files manually to my live server...basically overwrite everything bar avatars/attachments/smileys and settings.php

Now the mods are installed and working perfectly.

[青山 素子]

My open_basedir is set to "no value" - is that bad?

Nope. It means open_basedir isn't set, which is fine (it is unset by default). It can be set by a hosting provider to provide additional security.

Ok, here's my last post on this matter:

- The Package installation problem *is* related to the server environment.
- However, it would still be nice to know what is causing this problem - better error messages / graceful failure of mod installation?

It would be nice to have more descriptive errors, but perhaps the internal error is generic too.

[cubchai]

I am having this package manager trouble too. A friend of mine told me it is the ftp location issue. I have checked and all the location is correct. If I am not mistaken, I only need to provide smf local directory and sources directory right?

I have tried to install a fresh copy of smf, even the security update gives me modification parse error for all related files. I have tried the creating temp folder method. But it is still not working correctly. Is there any paths that I need to correct as my friend told me that I specified the wrong paths.

[depredator]

I managed to "fix" this issue by creating temp folder in /public_html/smf/Packages (I am using RC2).

[mrjuntao]

ok I have tried everyting in the threads with this problem and still it does not work, whnever i go to install a mod i see soemthing simlar to this on the first line:

Installing this package will perform the following actions:
   Type    Action    Description
1.    Execute Modification    -    Modification parse error

If i say to install it acts as though they are installed when they are clearly not, im almost at the end of my patience with this now as quite literally nothing works.

I am running 1.1RC3 and TP 0.95

[oldchap]

I'm having this exact same problem.

I've made a duplicate of my main forum (hosted with 34SP.com [nofollow]) on my ISP's (Freedom2Surf) free webspace. (not enough space left on my main webspace) This was to test the 1.1 upgrade from 1.0.9 and check that all mods and so on were fine before upgrading the main forum.

The upgrade went fine, but it would appear that there is something up with F2Ss server that means the package manager isn't working. I also commented out the lines which delete the temp dir after the package test runs and see that the extracted files are 0 bytes in size, which is causing the parse error. I note that safe mode is enabled on the server - would that make a difference? I tried the workaround for that and it didn't seem to work.

I would say it looks like the problem is to do with writing the decompressed files, as the preview function shows their content properly.

Does anyone know what might be breaking the file extraction, and hence package manager like this? I don't want to have to install 10+ packages by hand 

[Badmovies.org]

I have run into this too at this time, though it only affects some packages.  I even tried a completely fresh install, but no joy.  I have upgraded some parts of my server since first installing SMF and am wondering if the problem might be the fact that I am now using PHP 5.2.  I had also installed eAccelerator.  Other upgrades, such as MySQL do not seem like they could be the vector.

If I had a testbed VPS, I would try compiling Apache and PHP a few different ways to see if that changed things.

[jerm]

Anything in the error log?
Are permissions set correctly? (CHMOD to 777)

[oldchap]

Error log often has errors like this in it:

Code Select Expand


oldchap Today at 08:53:15
83.67.27.156    0e1b5ecf0a5222f409c90f8b9ef3b930
http://www.oldchap.f2s.com/rgu2dev/index.php?action=packages;sa=install;package=smf_1-1-1_patch_2.tar.gz

8: Undefined index: base_path
File: /web/sites/219/oldchap/www.oldchap.f2s.com/rgu2dev/Sources/Packages.php
Line: 302

oldchap Today at 08:53:15
83.67.27.156    0e1b5ecf0a5222f409c90f8b9ef3b930
http://www.oldchap.f2s.com/rgu2dev/index.php?action=packages;sa=install;package=smf_1-1-1_patch_2.tar.gz

8: Undefined index: package_readme
File: /web/sites/219/oldchap/www.oldchap.f2s.com/rgu2dev/Sources/Packages.php
Line: 294

oldchap Today at 08:53:15
83.67.27.156    0e1b5ecf0a5222f409c90f8b9ef3b930
http://www.oldchap.f2s.com/rgu2dev/index.php?action=packages;sa=install;package=smf_1-1-1_patch_2.tar.gz

8: Undefined index: base_path
File: /web/sites/219/oldchap/www.oldchap.f2s.com/rgu2dev/Sources/Packages.php
Line: 286


I'm fairly sure there's been a few times I've checked and there's been no errors but I can't reproduce that just now. Everything on the site has been 777'd, and I've tried with and without creating the "temp" dir.

[jerm]

oldchap, I would suggest to re-upload all your smf files except for Settings.php and Settings_bak.php, then try to install packages.

[oldchap]

Hmm, actually I hadn't tried that. I've now downloaded the "install" version of SMF 1.1 and uploaded it over the files that were already there, minus Settings.php and Settings_bak.php as suggested, but it does't seem to have made a difference.

Still getting:

Code Select Expand


oldchap Today at 09:37:21
193.63.235.44    b3d8e988b4a5fd55e8f5d71da7a2ad65
http://www.oldchap.f2s.com/rgu2dev/index.php?action=packages;sa=install;package=smf_1-1-1_patch_2.tar.gz

8: Undefined index: package_readme
File: /web/sites/219/oldchap/www.oldchap.f2s.com/rgu2dev/Sources/Packages.php
Line: 294

in the error log when I try to apply a mod, as well as the "modification parse error" on the packages page itself.

[Tanathka Prime]

I've just tested this on Fedora Core 6 using multiple machines, and its broken on all of them.

[merm]

From my understanding this error occurs for anyone using PHP 5x. Once I upgraded my server to PHP5 is when I was no longer able to install packages. I get this error consistently (on 95% of all mods) and it's really annoying. SMF should work with PHP5, I hope this is fixed soon.

See: SEO4SMF forum for more information. Specifically:

Smf have 2 styles to distribute modifications:
1. Is standard SDK (my package is made in this way)
2. like Tinyportal Package.

All packages made in SDK way cannot be installed.

[SleePy]

merm,

SMF handles PHP5 just fine. My Website and Test Server runs php5 and I can install packages without a problem.
The problem lays along a configuration issue with the host or the admin trying to install this.

SMF needs files writable by PHP and/or with permissions at 777 (755 or 775 wil work on some hosts) so it can edit files.. It edits files with php not FTP.