Feb 23rd, 2012, 2:41 PM
Hi Tom,
I just responded by email, but I'll post here as well.
It's all installed now. I came across two problems - I'll explain each in depth, so it's totally clear what's going on.
1. First, PHP sessions aren't working, but your phpinfo() file says that they are. I think this is probably just a simple misconfiguration on the server. Possibly the temporary folder where the session files are being created is either invalid or not writable. Those are the two most usual causes.
It's a bit daft (and will be changed!) but Form Tools doesn't actually need PHP sessions for standard use of the script - only the installation script does. This is simply because the install script is a bit dated and needs that aspect of it to be updated. I've found that on 99% of servers, PHP sessions are enabled so it simply hasn't caused much a problem so far.
Normally, once it's been installed, you can switch over to database sessions by adding the following line to your /global/config.php file:
$g_session_type = "database";
I did this after manually completing the install, and it's bypassed all the problems with sessions. Did you notice that on the config.php generation page, the generated content didn't include the field values you'd entered up to that point? That was caused by this.
2. There's a problem with your mail() script. Again, this looks like a server misconfiguration - or possibly a problem with your sendmail script itself. The 500 error you were getting on step 6 was caused by the installation script attempting to send the "Form Tools has been installed!" email to the administrator's email address. I've actually never seen that before! In every other case, if mail() is misconfigured or simply doesn't work, the line will just be ignored. Fascinating that it caused a complete meltdown here. I'd love to know the cause, but I'm afraid that that's something for your hosting provider / system administrator to answer.
Hope this helps!
- Ben
I just responded by email, but I'll post here as well.
It's all installed now. I came across two problems - I'll explain each in depth, so it's totally clear what's going on.
1. First, PHP sessions aren't working, but your phpinfo() file says that they are. I think this is probably just a simple misconfiguration on the server. Possibly the temporary folder where the session files are being created is either invalid or not writable. Those are the two most usual causes.
It's a bit daft (and will be changed!) but Form Tools doesn't actually need PHP sessions for standard use of the script - only the installation script does. This is simply because the install script is a bit dated and needs that aspect of it to be updated. I've found that on 99% of servers, PHP sessions are enabled so it simply hasn't caused much a problem so far.
Normally, once it's been installed, you can switch over to database sessions by adding the following line to your /global/config.php file:
$g_session_type = "database";
I did this after manually completing the install, and it's bypassed all the problems with sessions. Did you notice that on the config.php generation page, the generated content didn't include the field values you'd entered up to that point? That was caused by this.
2. There's a problem with your mail() script. Again, this looks like a server misconfiguration - or possibly a problem with your sendmail script itself. The 500 error you were getting on step 6 was caused by the installation script attempting to send the "Form Tools has been installed!" email to the administrator's email address. I've actually never seen that before! In every other case, if mail() is misconfigured or simply doesn't work, the line will just be ignored. Fascinating that it caused a complete meltdown here. I'd love to know the cause, but I'm afraid that that's something for your hosting provider / system administrator to answer.
Hope this helps!
- Ben