Newbie installing on Linux laptop

Newbie installing on Linux laptop

by Mark McNair -
Number of replies: 7
Hello Moodlers....(& maybe a drupalite or 2...).  smile
I am trying to install Moodle on a linux  laptop and can't get install.php to show or run.  The laptop has Mandrake 10.1, Drupal 4.5, Mysql 4.0.20,  Apache 1.3.33 and PHP 4.39.  Apache is compiled with php & mysql support.  Drupal (php)and other cgi web apps work fine.  I have installed Moogle in a subdirectory of the webserver web pages.  Permissions & ownership seem fine.  there is no config.php file. I am using the default 127.0.0.1 /localhost for a server name. What I have noticed is that when I hit moodle's index.php it recognizes moodle is not istalled and redirects to the install.php.  Then nothing happens - page stays blank.  Calling other *php files from that directory give an error that config.php is not configured correctly.(right)  Apache doesn't report any error and the Apache access log shows a proper 'GETcall.   I read some issue here that related to an old .htaccess file from drupal was messing things up, so I searched and didn't find any access files in the moodle directory.    Any ideas?  Are there any dependencies I missed?  Any help is appreciated!
Thx Mark
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In reply to Mark McNair

Re: Newbie installing on Linux laptop

by Laurie Savage -
Hmm! I have been through the same process. I set up a test of Moodle on my laptop before setting up a school intranet site.

I created a user, moodle, on my laptop and installed moodle's files into /home/moodle/public_html. This was easier than logging in as root all the time to play in /var/www. The permissions seemed to be the main issue. Try something like (in my case) chmod 711 /home/moodle and 755 public_html. Who is the owner of moodledata? Is moodledata's permission set to 777? Also the installation program didn't create config.php - it presented a listing which I copied into an editor and saved as config.php in the moodle root directory.

Laurie
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In reply to Laurie Savage

Re: Newbie installing on Linux laptop

by Mark McNair -
Thanks Laurie
I will go over this again today..  Thanks for the suggestions.  If I get anywhere, I'll get back to you!  Mark
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In reply to Mark McNair

Re: Newbie installing on Linux laptop

by Mark McNair -
Hi Laurie (and other Moodlers)
Still having trouble getting the install.php to run. Click on install.php and the browser reports 'done' instantly. No files are created and the browser screen stays blank.  It is probably a simple quirk, but.......
Laurie suggested permissions. Everything looks good to go (permissions & ownership) and other php apps (and other CMS) work fine.... No errors in Apache. just Moodle is stonewalling...
Any Ideas folks?  Needless to say - I'm a bit frustrated with 'simple' installs.....   Moodle 2.4, php 4.3.9 with mandrake 10.1,  Apache 1.3.33 and Mysql 4.0.20.  any help appreciated.
Happy Christmas...
Mark
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In reply to Mark McNair

Re: Newbie installing on Linux laptop

by Laurie Savage -
My first install was full of these annoying situations! I'm not really sure how I fixed them - but, what browser are you using? I have found that Konqueror 3.2 just doesn't work with Moodle. I don't know why.

Random thoughts
  • Have you tested your MySQL installation to see if it works OK? Can your moodleuser log into MySQL? That should not cause these problems though, you should get something, i.e. error messages sad
  • I have a test installation on Mandrake 10 on my laptop, and a production intranet system running on an old RedHat 7.3 desktop in my Physics Lab at work so our systems are not that different.
  • Who owns moodledata?
  • My system looks like

    /home/moodle (711)
    |
    |-> moodledata (777)
    |
    |-> public_html (755)
  • cat /home/moodle/.my.cnf ->
    [client]
    host=localhost
    user=moodleuser
    password=secret


I'm puzzled.
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In reply to Laurie Savage

Re: Newbie installing on Linux laptop

by Jeff Bean -

I was just struggling with the blank screen problem during a moodle installation.

Turns out that Red Hat's distribution of PHP has error logging disabled by default, which is why you see blank screens instead of error messages. This is also why you see no error information in the logs.

When you are installing moodle, be sure that php.ini has the following options set to On:

  • display_errors
  • log_erros
  • display_startup_errors

This helped me a lot.

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In reply to Mark McNair

Re: Newbie installing on Linux laptop

by Hung Phan -

I have the same problem before too, but I able to have Moodle install in my Dell laptop with Fedora Core 3 by following the link below(Apache, MySQL, and PHP are installed from the distribution CD)

http://moodle.org/wiki/index.php/StepByStepInstallMoodleOnRedhat

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In reply to Hung Phan

Re: Newbie installing on Linux laptop

by Mark McNair -

Thanks Guys

I will try stepping thru the instructions in the link, Hung.  Thanks

 Mysql works fine Laurie,  my other apps login and work fine.... as can I manually.   

Thanks for your ideas guys..  it's appreciated.  I'll let you know what happened..

Thanks & happy holidays 

Marki

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