Install hangs when trying to connect to database, on pretty standard LAMP instal

3 Posts

bregenspan Reply #1, 19 years, 1 month ago

I’m trying to install ModX 0.9.6 on an Ubuntu (Gutsy rolleyes

) box running Apache2, MySQL, and PHP5. I can get through the first parts of the pre-install process fine, but when I get to specifying the database login info, the "Test Connection" button takes me to an incomplete page that has the ModX header but ends right after the following HTML, without showing any kind of error message:

  <td class="pad" id="content" colspan="2">
			<table border="0" width="100%">
			<tr>
			<td valign="top" nowrap="nowrap"> </td>
			<td style="padding-left:20px;padding-right:20px;">

Similarly, if I ignore this and proceed with the installation, the Pre-Install Validation page gets to "Creating connection to the database:" and then hangs. Again, it doesn’t display any kind of error, just stops as if it were completely finished processing.

Does anyone know why an error like this might occur? Thanks!

MODX Staff
10,725 Posts

opengeek Reply #2, 19 years, 1 month ago

Can you provide more details on PHP version and MySQL versions? There is a bug or two in the 0.9.6 installation code (see FS#894 — Checking table_prefix failed during installation for a possible match). Try starting from scratch and skipping the test connection action and continuing with the installation or get the latest MODx trunk from SVN if that still doesn’t work.

Jason Coward
Chief Architect @ MODX
http://www.jasoncoward.com | http://twitter.com/drumshaman | https://github.com/opengeek

3 Posts

bregenspan Reply #3, 19 years, 1 month ago

Thanks for getting back to me, OpenGeek!

Trying the SVN sounds good and I’ll do that as soon as I get a chance. Sorry for neglecting to provide more detailed version info -- I’m running:

Apache/2.2.4 (Ubuntu) with PHP/5.2.3-1ubuntu5
MySQL 5.0.45-Debian_1ubuntu2

These are development versions but have been working well with other PHP/MySQL scripts, so it definitely seems like what’s going on could be due to the bug you’re talking about. I’ll reply back to let you know how the SVN version works on this setup (which is the latest stuff in the Ubuntu Gutsy repository).

3 Posts

bregenspan Reply #4, 19 years, 1 month ago

Doh. The error was between keyboard and chair. My PHP/MySQL was not set up correctly; the app that did work was connecting to the database in an unconventional way and the PHP SQL module was not running.

To spare stupid people this difficulty in the future, maybe it’d make sense to check for the function "mysql_connect()". If it can be accessed, SQL is set up, otherwise, not. Or to recognize the fatal error that gets thrown when trying to call mysql_connect and letting the user know what’s wrong instead of crashing without explanation. Obviously, a working LAMP or WAMP setup is really necessary for using MODx, but it might be good to reiterate that fact to those who are sometimes a bit thick (like me for instance), especially since at least on Debian systems PHP5 stopped coming with MySQL enabled by default.