System-Ran Cron, Not User

What if it attempted to set $base_url by first by trying $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']. If that fails then extracting it from the .htaccess file under the mod_rewrite section or from sites\default\settings.php. If those fail, hit the DB and try to get it from the variables table where name = site_mail or boost_file_path. To validate results get sever IP with $_SERVER['SERVER_ADDR'] and compare against gethostbyname("One of the above methods"). Is this the right approach?

This should work for me, gotta wait till tomorrow for my scheduled cron to run. $base_url doesn't have a trailing / at the end correct?

/**
 * Returns the full directory path to the static file cache directory.
 */
function boost_cache_directory($host = NULL, $absolute = TRUE) {
  global $base_url;
  if ($base_url == "http://") {
    //get email address from db
    $email_array = array();
    $email_array = explode("@", unserialize(db_result(db_query("SELECT value FROM variable WHERE name = 'site_mail'"))));
    $base_url = $base_url.'www.'.$email_array[1];
  }
  $parts = parse_url($base_url);
  $host = !empty($host) ? $host : $parts['host'];

  // FIXME: correctly handle Drupal subdirectory installations.
  return implode('/', !$absolute ? array('cache', $host) : array(getcwd(), 'cache', $host));
}

I'll test this out.
This error and correct fix (if this does indeed fix it) should be added to the txt files that comes along with the module.

no, this should be part of the documentation; modifying the settings.php file is something that needs to be done in order to get boost running at full steam. Just like editing the .htaccess file.

editing settings.php fixes this error; it's the right way to do it because of potential multisite issues. Needs to be added to the modules documentation.

is there any way to check that $base_url is set in settings.php, warn the user if its not?

adding tag

Going to link to this post from install.txt

Editing settings.php

settings.php is usually located in the sites/default directory. Editing it can be a little tricky because of permissions. Follow the steps below, and you should be fine.

1. chmod default directory to 755
2. chmod settings.php to 755
3. edit settings.php - set the $base_url variable to your site (line 125 or so).
4. chmod settings.php back to original value (usually 444)
5. chmod default directory back to original value (usually 555)

You can change permissions via ftp as well. Here's a guide for FileZilla.
http://affiliate-minder.com/internetmarketing/changing-file-permissions-...

patch applied

Run cron via the command line & it throws those errors.

/web/cgi-bin/php5 "$HOME/html/cron.php"

which is the default way on a lot of cron management interfaces. Using wget would work because the URL is there; Poormanscron would work as well. It's an error that doesn't get reported that often because it's not easy to get the output from running cron via command line. Having $base_url set is important for clearing out the correct subdir inside the cache folder; boost_cache_expire_all() uses it. I know the installation has a lot of steps, but this is an important one that can effect how boost works. I would rather have it complicated and work for everyone, vs getting bug reports in the issue queue. I don't like making things more complicated but sometimes it has to be done.

We can still require step #7, but we can also make boost smarter.

if ($base_url == "http://") {
  $base_url = $base_url . str_replace('cache/', '', variable_get('boost_file_path', boost_cache_directory(NULL, FALSE)));
}

After looking into #446370: cache directory not set to default on initial install - throw notice on status page if this happens, I think this is a fairly safe way to do this.

boost_file_path is set by Cache file path: on the performance page. boost_cache_directory(NULL, FALSE) is what boost uses for its default setting of that variable; it defaults to "cache/www.example.com", www.example.com being the site. Thus all I do is strip off cache/ and I got the key part of the base URL. Should I throw a watchdog warning or notice as this is not 100% foolproof; if the site is using the defaults then it will work 100% of the time.

What does drush set the $base_url variable to? default? can you check this for me? I'm positive $base_url gets set to "http://" if run from the command line.
http://api.drupal.org/api/function/conf_init

Here's the proposed addition to the boost_cache_directory() function.

if ($base_url == "http://") {
  watchdog('boost', 'base_url is not set in your settings.php file. Please read #7 in boosts INSTALL.txt file.', array(), WATCHDOG_NOTICE);
  $base_url = $base_url . str_replace('cache/', '', variable_get('boost_file_path', boost_cache_directory(NULL, FALSE)));
}

Committed & made the cache dir a global variable. See http://cvs.drupal.org/viewvc.py/drupal/contributions/modules/boost/boost... for changes made.