[Xerte] Xerte installation

Tue Oct 6 15:26:35 BST 2009

Pat,

Oops, just checked and found I hadn't installed php5_ldap rpm. I can now login via LDAP.

Anyway you could have the setup check that the pre-requisites have been met during the installation as have seen with other web applications?

Thanks for your help.

Kevin

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Murray, Kevin P
Sent: 06 October 2009 15:11
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Xerte installation

Pat,

Still struggling with the blank page. I can login to the management.php side fine using the admin username and password so I have attempted to enter details for our LDAP servers. Although a format isn't specified so I have just put the bare name ldap.example.com not the URL ldaps://ldap.example.com.

Turning the PHP display_errors On shows no errors on the blank page and the "Notice: Undefined variable: form_string in /opt/xerte/index.php" only appears when going back to the index.php page explicitly as there is no way to get back from the blank page.

Changing the frontpage.css fixed all the case related errors.

Is there a specific debug mode in Xerte itself to make it give me more feedback as to what is wrong with it?

Kevin

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Patrick Lockley
Sent: 05 October 2009 13:49
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Xerte installation

Your blank page is almost certainly a lack of LDAP on your server. Form string is something that comes from the database, I think to draw the login box. It should be there.

Look in sitedetails for form_string?

The admin username and password is for management.php only (it doesn't work for index.php)

I thought we'd gotten all the mod_spelling errors out of the way.

Anyone know a quick way of lower casing a website?

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Murray, Kevin P
Sent: 05 October 2009 13:45
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Xerte installation

Thanks, Pat. It finished the install now. Next problem after I login with the admin username and password the next page is just blank.

Apache error_log

[Mon Oct 05 13:35:44 2009] [error] [client 141.241.170.118] PHP Notice:  Undefined variable: form_string in /opt/xerte/index.php on line 41
[Mon Oct 05 13:35:44 2009] [error] [client 141.241.170.118] File does not exist: /opt/xerte/website_code/images/RoundCornerTr.gif, referer: http://xerte.kingston.ac.uk/website_code/styles/frontpage.css
[Mon Oct 05 13:35:44 2009] [error] [client 141.241.170.118] File does not exist: /opt/xerte/website_code/images/RoundCornerbr.gif, referer: http://xerte.kingston.ac.uk/website_code/styles/frontpage.css
[Mon Oct 05 13:35:44 2009] [error] [client 141.241.170.118] File does not exist: /opt/xerte/website_code/images/RoundCornerbL.gif, referer: http://xerte.kingston.ac.uk/website_code/styles/frontpage.css

In website_code/images the file names are RoundCornerTR.gif, RoundCornerBR.gif and RoundCornerBL.gif so my case sensitive Linux system is happy with the case difference.  However I think the important one may be the first one "Undefined variable": form_string"

Why is it undefined? Has the index.php crashed out and if so why?

Kevin

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Patrick Lockley
Sent: 05 October 2009 13:06
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Xerte installation

I just did a test install, and I get those errors if setup/database.txt isn't chmod 0777

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Patrick Lockley
Sent: 05 October 2009 12:22
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Xerte installation

Hello,

I've never read the default php.ini, I've heard the plot is really bad.

We did make a long tag version a while back, and we asked people to report back to us, but never heard anything. I would assume grepping <? For <?PHP in all the php files would be quicker than setting up a virtual server?

As far as I know, the only reason it would fail to write those values to database.txt is because of a rights issue on the folder?

Pat

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Murray, Kevin P
Sent: 05 October 2009 11:46
To: xerte at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
Subject: [Xerte] Xerte installation

I am trying to install Xerte toolkits and I am running into a few problems.

First just a moan as it says in the default php.ini file "For portable, redistributable code, be sure not to use short tags.". As the web servers here do not use short_open_tags I had to set up a special virtual machine on which I could turn on short_open_tags just for Xerte as you can't turn it on for just one Apache virtual server it had to affect the whole web service.

Moan over onto the current problem. I have followed through the installation and it has created the database OK as the first time it asks for database privileges it asks for server name, database name, user, password, and database prefix. However the second time it only asks for a database user with enough select, insert, modify and delete privileges and a password. So I duly entered these. On the next page there is a long list of options in which I filled in the admin username and password, and put the name of the institution in. On clicking next it says it cannot write anything to the database. I check in the Xerte directory and the database.php has the second database username and password but no database host, database name or database prefix.

I have been through the steps a number of times now and the only time I made it close to the end was to modify the database.php file manually.

My colleagues from the Education Technology Unit are keen to use Xerte so it doubly frustrating that the installation is difficult.

Kevin Murray

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