MODX :: My Installation Work Around

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Michael Hall Reply #1, 3 years, 4 months ago

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The only way I was able to install this latest version was take the following action since the standard installation procedure led to an infinite loop in which the install/index.php file kept calling itself over and over.

The <head> section contains "" which apparently was causing my browser to reload the page repeatedly without doing anything else.

The action I took was to delete the echo and the exit statements from the initial loop-back block and to call the page with this syntax:

www.mydomain.com/install/index.php?action=language

The installation then succeeded and now seems to be working exactly as advertised. What am I missing here about the initial installation step? I haven't noticed anyone reporting this as an issue. I tried a clean install multiple times using Firefox 3 as my browser, but the result was always the same. Not until I followed the above steps was I able to install the software.

It seems like the session_test variable is not retained, but during the installation the configuration tests tell me that everything is configured correctly. Does anyone have any comments about this? Does this mean my session handling ability is incorrect even though the installation reports every aspect of my configuration is correct? How can I test for session-handling correctness and what would be the symptoms if session handling is not working correctly? I haven't as of yet detected any obvious errors with the installation.

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sottwell Reply #2, 3 years, 4 months ago

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I wonder what PHP_SELF is reporting in your case. It's quite possible that it's doing something unexpected, and you're being sent to a different subdomain (www vs no www, perhaps?) in which case the session would not carry over, and the whole thing would have to start all over again.

I had trouble with one server that was using FastCGI, and was actually returning the location of the php executable rather than the script being run. That one I eventually had to give up and manually hard-code path and URL into the installer and the config.inc.php file. I'm not sure if things were changed to accommodate this kind of configuration or not.

I've run across a couple of servers that didn't return a PHP_SELF value at all for security reasons, or so they said.

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Michael Hall Reply #3, 3 years, 4 months ago

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I tracked the problem to an incorrect PHP session handling configuration: session.cookie_domain. Thanks for stimulating my debugging efforts.

Since this is a Release Support forum for version 0.9.6.2, I would make a note to viewers more qualified than myself to address this installation issue: The initial if block in install/index.php is weak in that if session handling is broken, the procedure to (1) set a session variable; (2) call itself; (3) test if the session variable exists; and (4) call itself again if the session variable does not exist leads to recursion with no hope for a break. As it did in my case.

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PLEASE, PLEASE specify the version of MODX you are using . . . PLEASE!

MODx info for everyone: http://bobsguides.com/MODx.html

BobRay Reply #4, 3 years, 4 months ago

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Good catch, and your description is very clear. Would you mind reporting this at the "bugs and requests" link at the top of this page (the server is being upgraded so try again later if you have trouble).

Thanks!