No luck getting Netdoc to run on Ubuntu

Netdoc looks like a wonderful tool, but I am having a rough time getting it to work. The installation documents leave much to be desired! I have been trying to build a very minimal server for development use, so I started with an Ubuntu Hoary CUSTOM installation.

After spending much time getting eAccelerator running (there are several dependencies not mentioned in docs, I will list what I remember at the bottom), I am now to the point where I http://server/netdoc ... and I get a blank page. On 'view source' I see there are some generic HTTP tags and that's it. No content!

I would dearly love to find a .deb to automate the NetDoc install on Ubuntu! In the meantime, can you suggest anything to help me get this running?

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Not-listed dependencies (as debian/ubuntu packages) that I *think* are needed for installing eAccelerator:

g++, make, php4-dev, libtool, automake, autoconf, apache2-prefork-dev

I haven't seen this kind of error, and it's pretty hard to figure out what could be wrong.

However, one thing that comes to mind is MySQL 4.1 ... Do you use it? The password mechanism has changed in it. This might help:
mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'some_user'@'some_host' = OLD_PASSWORD('newpwd');
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/old-client.html

If you make a php file which contains <? phpinfo(); ?>, do you see eAccelerator?

If you have the server on the net and trust me to give some rights to debug it, I will find out what's wrong. :-) I have done this once before when a user unknown to me had an error - it went just fine.

The server is behind a firewall ... we might explore getting around that.

Yes I see eAccelerator in the PHP test page. I can paste the results of that here too if you want them - let me know if there are any specific sections you want!

Here is the exact install steps I have taken:

--START INSTALL STEPS---
sudo apt-get install mysql-server-4.1
mysqladmin -u root password "password"
sudo apt-get install php4 php4-dev libapache2-mod-php4 apache2-prefork-dev
{need for eaccelerator installation; could prolly remove after)
sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/rewrite.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/rewrite.load

added the following to /etc/apache2/sites-available/default:
## --ADDITIONS FOR NETDOC--
<Directory "/var/www/netdoc">
AllowOverride All
Options FollowSymLinks
</Directory>
## --END NETDOC ADDITIONS--

UNcommented the following lines in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf:
#AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
#AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

cd /var/www
sudo wget http://www.visiomode.com/dl/Netdoc-1_4999.tar.gz
sudo tar -zxvf Netdoc-1_4999.tar.gz

sudo chown www-data /var/www/netdoc/groups
sudo chown www-data /var/www/netdoc/db/dbconfig.php
sudo chown www-data /var/www/netdoc/admin/visiomode.license

--eAccelerator--
sudo apt-get install automake libtool g++ make php4-cli
cd /var/www/netdoc/eAccelerator
tar -zxvf eaccelerator-0.9.2a.tar.gz
cd /var/www/netdoc/eAccelerator/eaccelerator
export PHP_PREFIX="/usr/bin"
sudo $PHP_PREFIX/phpize4
sudo ./configure --enable-eaccelerator=shared --with-php-config=$PHP_PREFIX/php-config
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo vi /etc/php4/apache2/php.ini
{add all the stuff found at http://10.0.0.51/netdoc/eAccelerator/linux.php}
{edit this in}
; *** MAKE SURE THE PATH IS CORRECT ***
zend_extension="/usr/lib/php4/20020429/eaccelerator.so"
{DON'T forget to follow the password generation instructions at bottom!}

{a test page}
sudo vi /var/www/netdoc/test.php {paste in the below}
<?php phpinfo(); ?>

sudo apache2 -k restart
{@ another system} http://10.0.0.51/netdoc {returns nothing .. jus some generic HTTP open & close tags}

---END INSTALL STEPS---

I'm sorry I was a bit rushed before, didn't notice your asking what version of mySQL. From the 'status' command:

Server version: 4.1.10a-Debian_2-log

I should also note I have

Ubuntu 'Hoary Hedgehog' 5.04
apache2 2.0.53-5ubuntu5
php4 4.3.10-10ubuntu4
... and the eAccelerator 0.9.2a from your tarball.

The install notes I gave in prior post are pretty complete, since I am trying to build a very repeatable instruction set here. In fact the "machine" is a VMware image, which I returned to an earlier snapshot today and then tried the whole NetDoc install process again using the same commands.

I am pretty sure eAccelerator is working right. I turned the eA debugging to "1" in php.ini and cranked Apache2 logging up to 'debug'. When I browse http://servername/netdoc/index.php, Apache logs lots of stuff like

[5228] EACCELERATOR hit: "/var/www/netdoc/index.php"
[5228] EACCELERATOR hit: "/var/www/netdoc/defines.php"
[5228] EACCELERATOR hit: "/var/www/netdoc/admin/defines.php"

...but I am still getting blank pages in my browser!

Ok, I will test with Ubuntu today, but one question:

Do you have mod_php installed? PHP must be running as mod_php, not in cgi/fastcgi mode. I think this should be mentioned in the docs as well :)

On the other hand, I don't think php_dev needs to be there, but I'm not sure (depends on wether phpize is in the normal version).

Yes, mod_php is installed and the module is loaded.

You're right - I installed php4-dev to get phpize. Same goes for the php-cli package; without it I didn't have commandline access to the php executable. Both needed, of course, for the eA install process. When I get NetDoc working I will try removing this stuff - and maybe the compilers as well. Mainly because I am trying to build a very lightweight server.

Thank you soo much for all of your support in this!

Found the problem:

The package php4-mysql needs to be installed as well, it doesn't seem to be installed as default. Also if you want to enable thumbnail generation support, install php-gd2.

I admit, Netdoc should have told that MySQL support is missing - I will add this into the next version.

Also, it seems that Ubuntu/Hoary has to be configured to use the "universe" to check for packages, otherwise apt-get will report "not found" for php4-mysql. Uncomment universe by:
nano -w /etc/apt/sources.list

A couple of helpful links maybe:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=21612
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/AddingRepositoriesHowto

Thanks for the bug report! I'm eager to hear about any problems ... so that they can be fixed.

BTW,

You may want to keep php-cli, as you can update Netdoc with that. It's done by cd'ing to netdoc directory and giving the command php admin/update.php and then giving the password at the prompt.

Ilkka

Thanks, that did the trick! Netdoc is working on my system now. During the web part of the installation there was one little glitch, which doesn't seem to be effecting Netdoc use at all.

It was in the last page of the install, here are the last lines I saw there:

Importing Layout (/var/www/netdoc/template/layouts/layout2.nd).
Layout Import done.
Importing sample project.

Netdoc Error
Undefined index: id_user_groups (/var/www/netdoc/import/Import.php: 0)

This is one of those things that I have heard about but haven't quite pinpointed yet to something specific.

But for the questions :) ... if you run phpinfo(), do you see Thread safety enabled or disabled in the start of the report?

Also, do you have eAccelerator installed as zend_extension, or, zend_extension_ts?

Thread safety is disabled.
zend_extension

Ok... that's how it should.

I will keep an eye on this. I have one suspect and will work on it.