By lepus on

OK, I know when I am beaten and have to ask for help. I am trying to load Drupal 4.5.0 onto a virtual hosted server and can't get it to function at all. Drupal looks to be a possible solution for my needs but the excitement of finding it is fading with my lack of success. I have checked out other CMS stystems and run one on e107. With all of the others (PHPNuke, PostNuke, etc) loading and set up was easy as they have installers.

My situation is that I cannot use MySQL Administrator or similar tools to access my database. I only have the admin tool the host supplies. This lets me view and edit tables and run SQL queries - though I do not have a clue about that! - but I have no control over top level stuff. I can only create one database per domain which is created with full user permissions I believe. I had no problem creating a database and importing the database.mysql file, which looks fine.

The PHP is v4.3.8 and the only difference in the configuration as far as I can see is that "session.save_handler" is set to "files", though this is overwritten by the .htaccess file so it shouldn't make any difference.

I have correctly (I believe) defined the db_url and base_url - and have tried various other deperate options in case! I have tried loading it to my local root and into a directory (with suggested alterations from various postings) but nothing works.

I have looked and searched through the site and forums for answers but to no avail. Nothing quite answers my problem.

If I try to look at the site in a browser I get a 500 internal server error and Opera thoughtfully tells me to check my error log which I haven't a clue how to find!!

Do I have to CHMOD anything? It has to be something really simple that I haven't done as the other, less exciting and heavier systems work fine.

Can anyone help? I'd really like to try out Drupal as it looks ideal - if only I can get past this first, rather important, stage

Comments

Steven’s picture

Steven commented

What version of Apache is your host running? It is possible there is an incompatibility in Drupal's .htaccess file. This file is located in the Drupal root. Try opening it and comment out line per line until the error is fixed.

lepus’s picture

lepus commented

Thanks for your reply.

I believe it is v 1.3.28 (UNIX)

What do you mean by commenting out? Sorry, but I am very new to all this. The other CMS systems I use haven't needed much delving into code. Any particular lines?

Bèr Kessels’s picture

Bèr Kessels commented

with commenting out Steven meant to put a so called "comment" character in front of the line. That way apache will not execute those commands. Its sort of similar to removing the lines one, by one. The only difference is that once deltetd its gone for good. If its commented, you still know what used to be there,

For apache .htaccess files the comment character is a '#' (without the quotes)

And if this solved you problem, would you be so kind to report back that it helped? This will help others whom are looking for the same solution.

[Ber | Drupal Services webschuur.com]

lepus’s picture

lepus commented

Thanks for that. I guessed it would be something like that but never would have guessed what character! Thanks for making it so clear. I'll try it.

I apppreciate your confidence that it will fix the problem. Yes, I certainly will report back either way, but I am going to leave it for tonight and try it when I am fresh tomorrow.

Kind regards

lepus’s picture

lepus commented

Thanks for the ideas but commenting out lines in the .htaccess file didn't do the trick. I tried various combinations too without luck.

Is it actually possible to load Drupal onto a a virtual server host? Has someone developed an installer or "how to" for this situation?

I am not sure that I have mod_rewrite. Whilst looking for this I did find an error log on one of the online testers which gave me this info:

Fatal·error:··Table·'mydbname.mydbnameusers'·doesn't·exist
query:·SELECT·u.*,·s.*·FROM·mydbnameusers·u·INNER·JOIN·mydbnamesessions·s·ON·u.uid·=·s.uid·WHERE·s.sid·=·'51f93442c06d6e0b7956af7b00ab8359'·AND·u.status·<·3·LIMIT·0,·1·in·/my_path/public_html/includes/database.mysql.inc·on·line·125

I looked at line 125 which says:

trigger_error(mysql_error() ."\nquery: ". htmlspecialchars($query),E_USER_ERROR);

which means zilch to me!!

Does all this mean something to any of you folk? Does it prompt any ideas on what I can do?

Thanks in anticipation.

Steven’s picture

Steven commented

Looks like you defined the $db_prefix "mydbname" in conf.php. Given that this is the same as your database name, I doubt this was intentional. Try setting it back to "".

$db_prefix is a feature where you prefix the name of every table, in case you only have one database and want to fit multiple applications in it, each with a unique name prefix.

lepus’s picture

lepus commented

Thanks for that. I seem to have got to page 1!!

Yes I did add in the prefix along the way having tried it without and failed. Who knows what I changed in between?

Thanks again. I apologise in advance for the problems I will be posting in the future now I have got in.

Cheers.