[pmwiki-users] Install/reinstall problem

[Algis Kabaila]

Jo.
On Tuesday 28 June 2005 19:32, pmwiki-users-request at pmichaud.com wrote:

Thank you for responding.  It was really great to hear from the list - almost 
an instantaneous response.

> Message: 9
> Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:31:19 +0200
> From: Joachim Durchholz <jo at durchholz.org>
> Subject: Re: [pmwiki-users] Install/reinstall problem
> To: pmwiki-users at pmichaud.com
> Message-ID: <42C10AD7.4060709 at durchholz.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
> 
> Algis Kabaila wrote:
> > I get the following error message:
> > 
> > Fatal error: Call to undefined function: session_id() 
> > in /home/al/public_html/xa/pmwiki.php on line 1222
> 
> This shouldn't happen.

Cross my heart - not only it did happen, but it kept happening over and over 
and over...

> 
> > I remember that this happened with the old HDD, too.  I "solved" this 
problem 
> > by installing all the php (4.0?) packages I could find on the my SuSE 9.2 
> > distro CD's.
> 
> A SuSE mailing list post recommends installing the php4-session package 
> (probably instead of some other package - session support is compiled 
> right in, not added as a module).
> 
> > I now run SuSE 9.3 distro with kernel 2.6x.  Rather than 
> > installing all the php function packages I can lay my hands on, can you 
tell 
> > me which php packages are required to run pmwiki?  What php packages 
should I 
> > install and is it php 4 or php 5?
> 
> PmWiki should run just fine with either PHP4 or PHP5. I had issues with 
> the mailprotect module on 4.1.something, but the core ran just fine.
> 
> > For Sharon's benefit, I seem to recall that the permission problems can be 
> > mitigated if one copies files into wikilib.d directory and hopes that the 
> > pmwiki.php will cause the Apache to copy those files across to the wiki.d 
> > directory, with the correct owner, group and permissions, no?
> 
> That should work. However, I wouldn't recommend that: any future 
> upgrades may overwrite files that you have edited.
> 

I have not experienced any overwrites from during the upgrades.  I would like 
to understand how the upgrades work.  My impression is that the pmwiki.php 
copies all upgraded files to the wikilib.d directory and pmwiki.php copies 
them to the wiki.d directory, but only if there is not a preexisting file of 
the same name in the wiki.d directory already.  Is that so, Jo?  Or should we 
ask Pm?  What do you think?

> However, you could copy something like Test.Test to pmwiki.d, edit it so 
> it gets copied to wiki.d, check what ownership and permission were 
> applied by Apache, and change all files in wiki.d to match. (Don't 
> forget to clean up and remove Test.Test in both directories afterwards *g*.)
> 

I have not tested it, but will do RSN :-).  Actually, i copied the whole 
directory on from my home "server" PC to my "main" P4 PC - to the 
~/public_html directory.  It all works fine now.  

It is rather mysterious this php installation stuff.  I did have php4-session 
installed.  I think that your recommendation was quite correct!  Well, it did 
NOT work, after the installation of the packages.

But after a re-boot (hey, reboot is windows speciality!), it auto-magically 
stopped giving me the  "Call to undefined function: session_id() " - it 
replaced it by "Connection to local host is broken", but only from Konqueror 
- in the same session Firefox just quit without any warning  :-).   

Without any changes of configuration or anything sensible, the system just 
came back a few sessions later and works ok.  Actually, I was on the verge of 
uninstalling php and reinstalling php5 when it occurred to me to check once 
more just before all the hassle of reinstallation - and it worked...

I did read somewhere in the google world about something like "sessions 
disabled in the SuSE distro".  Well it does work now.  Have no idea why, but 
the aussie saying is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".  BTW, phpinfo gives 
this line the Configure Command description:

'--enable-safe-mode' '--enable-sigchild' '--disable-ctype' '--disable-session' 
'--without-mysql'

That  '--disable-session' seems to suggest what it says.  Perhaps I should 
return to learning php...

Jo, thank you again - your email response cheered me up and encouraged  me to 
continue with the experimentation.

Al.
> > PS: Whilst "session_id() " search in google returns over 1 000 000 hits, 
the 
> > information there is really too general to be useful for this specific 
> > purpose of running pmwiki.
> 
> I did "SuSE session_id" :-)

I did follow in your steps.  It seems that there is something in the 
configuration of php as distributed that has caused some angst amongst the 
php folks.


> 
> Regards,
> Jo

-- 
Algis Kabaila  http://www.pcug.org.au/~akabaila