ProsePoint Express: hosted newspaper website content management software

Unable to install ProsePoint using XAMPP 1.7.2 test box

7 replies [Last post]
Wed, 25/11/2009 - 04:39
ProductTester
User offline. Last seen 2 years 10 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 25/11/2009
Posts:

I am attempting to run a suitability test of ProsePoint on a XAMPP 1.7.2 test machine running Windows Vista (SP 2). XAMPP 1.7.2 includes the following:

  • Apache 2.2.12 (IPv6 enabled) + OpenSSL 0.9.8k
  • MySQL 5.1.37 + PBXT engine
  • PHP 5.3.0
  • phpMyAdmin 3.2.0.1
  • Webalizer 2.21-02 + GeoIP lite
  • FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.32
  • msmtp 1.4.17

I followed the following procedures to conduct the installation:

  1. The ProsePoint was placed inside the following directory: C:\xampp\htdocs\news
  2. Created an empty database within MySQL and added DB privileges to a new user per the installation instructions
  3. Made of a copy of the default.settings.php file and renamed it settings.php in the \news\sites\default directory.
  4. Made sure nothing at or below the \news directory was set to read-only.
  5. Started the installation by browsing to http://localhost/news using Firefox (version 3.5.5).
  6. Completed the "Database Configuration" page. Database host was set to "localhost".
  7. "Installing ProsePoint" completed.
  8. "Configure site" page listed the following error/warnings:
warning: Attempt to modify
property of non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 24.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 25.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 26.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 28.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 29.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 30.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 31.

The "Configure site" page indicates that "Your server has been successfully tested to support this feature."

I have attempted to load with and without Clean URLs. When attempting to install WITHOUT/WITHOUT Clean URLs I received the following error message:

"ProsePoint requires a web server that supports clean urls. Please see the ProsePoint requirements pages for more information."

When I attempt to install WITH/WITH Clean URLs I am directed to the "Choose ProsePoint variant" page.

  • Complete the "Choose ProsePoint variant" page by selecting "A site with minimal content. Use this for building your site upon."  I note that my site name has now appeared in the banner area.
  • Upon moving forward I receive "The connection was reset" error page. My Apache server also resets, stops working, and then restarts (as reported by Windows Vista).
  • By hitting browser "Reload", I am directed to the "ProsePoint already installed" page.
  • Attempting to go directly to http://localhost/news results in the same "The connection was reset" error page and Apache server crash. I note that the browser address is then reset at "http://www.localhost.com/news/"

Anyone else have this issue or know what might be mis-configured?

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Wed, 25/11/2009 - 04:42
#1
ProductTester
User offline. Last seen 2 years 10 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 25/11/2009
Posts:
One last note -- checking
One last note -- checking MySQL -- it appears the database was created and filled appropriately.
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Wed, 25/11/2009 - 10:59
#2
beng
User offline. Last seen 1 week 3 days ago. Offline
Joined: 27/02/2009
Posts:
...

Hi,

Hmmm... I haven't actually tested with PHP 5.3. There might be some sort of issue there.

However, the 'Attempt to modify property ...' messages are all warnings and may not necessarily be fatal. Still, I'd have to chase them up.

If your apache server is crashing, the problem is likely to be with Apache and/or PHP. Apache shouldn't crash from parsing and executing PHP code.

So, what to do?

You could wait for me to test against PHP 5.3

You could try using an older version of XAMPP with PHP 5.2.x

You could chase up this Apache crashing issue with XAMPP

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Wed, 25/11/2009 - 13:54
#3
beng
User offline. Last seen 1 week 3 days ago. Offline
Joined: 27/02/2009
Posts:
ProsePoint does not successfully install on PHP 5.3.0 ...

Been doing some testing on a test server with PHP 5.3.0. Preliminary results indicate ProsePoint does not successfully install on PHP 5.3.0. Still looking at it ...

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Wed, 25/11/2009 - 15:08
#4
beng
User offline. Last seen 1 week 3 days ago. Offline
Joined: 27/02/2009
Posts:
ProsePoint doesn't work on PHP 5.3, and probably won't for a whi

Hi,

Sorry, ProsePoint doesn't work on PHP 5.3, and probably won't for a while yet. There are numerous small bits of breakage in various upstream modules and it'll take a while to fix them up. Sorry.

In the meantime, please try an older version of XAMPP with PHP 5.2.x.

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Sun, 29/11/2009 - 08:52
#5
ProductTester
User offline. Last seen 2 years 10 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 25/11/2009
Posts:
I suggest you change your
I suggest you change your requirements page to indicate that ProsePoint does not work on PHP 5.3 or higher. Currently you list 5.2 or higher as compatible. Sorry we couldn't test your Drupal application.
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Mon, 30/11/2009 - 10:24
#6
beng
User offline. Last seen 1 week 3 days ago. Offline
Joined: 27/02/2009
Posts:
Hi, Updated in the

Hi,

Updated in the requirements section. Thank you for pointing this out and sorry for the inconvenience.

Just curious ... isn't it sort of early to be considering PHP 5.3 for production use? I'm under the impression most hosting providers wouldn't be using it yet until a couple more versions.

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Wed, 28/04/2010 - 05:53
#7
Pere
User offline. Last seen 1 year 29 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 28/04/2010
Posts:
Hi, I'm new to ProsePoint. I

Hi,

I'm new to ProsePoint. I was trying to install it in my Windows development box and was getting many errors, some of them the same as stated in this thread due to using PHP 5.3.

As I didn't want to downgrade to PHP 5.2.x, I tryied to install in my Dreamhost shared hosting account. It went flawless and the process only took a few seconds.

I then downloaded the files to my box, did a database backup, ran it and... Voilà! It works. So I don't think ProsePoint 0.32 is "totally incompatible" with PHP 5.2.

Anyway, I encountered some errors. The home_banner.png image in the home page is missing, and it's due to the path where ProsePoint is trying to locate it its including part of the name of the path from where the files are stored in my shared hosting. Suspecting this was due to some cache files from the ones I copied from my shared hosting account (since I wasn't unable to find any config files wich were defining paths), I tried emptying the cache* tables in the database.

Then something happened when erasing the contents of cache_views. When reloading the home page, the following warnings appeared again, wich already appeared during my local, failed installation process:

<code>

warning: Attempt to modify

property of non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 24.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 25.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 26.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 28.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 29.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 30.
warning: Attempt to modify property of
non-object in
C:\xampp\htdocs\news\profiles\prosepoint\modules\date\includes\date_plugin_display_attachment.inc
on line 31.

</code>

Where, investigating in the the file and googling a little, I found the error was kind of trivial and was already solved. You can find more info in this discussion:

http://drupal.org/node/549884

And a proper patch here:

http://drupal.org/files/issues/date.5.3.patch

 

I think the problems to make ProsePoint compatible with PHP 5.3 should be quite easy to solve, following this example, and should be a priority.

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