In reply to:

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Did you do the test install? If so, where's the report back?

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Thanks for reminding me! Actually I did attempt a test installation, but was not completely successful.

1) The "new" installer makes some assumptions that are not consistent with PHP running as CGI. The original poster's error's were caused by the way the installation script author derived a path (he "truncated" the $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'] variable to obrain the path for other parts of the install, and, of course, that didn't work under PHP-CGI. That explains why the error messages included the /dh in the path (as it is part of the php.cgi path on Dreamhost.)

2) I was able to get past that point by modifying the /setup/class/Setup.php file and replacing $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'] with $_SERVER['PATH_TRANSLATED'] in line 10 and line 441, allowing the correct path to be derived and the install to proceed.

3)After returning the directories and files to their "pre install-attempt" condition (except for my modified Setup.php file), dropping all the tables created by the failed install attempt (the installer borks if the database has *any* table in it - even ones that are not phpWebsite related ), and running the installer again, the install proceeded without incident until the very end, where the final loading of the MySQL tables reported two "failures". Inspecting the phpWebsite error logs revealed two errors were reported:

Error [notice] [-16] Core - PHPWS_Core::checkBranch() - Unable to verify source directory. Check PHPWS_SOURCE_DIR.
Error [notice] [-18] SELECT XXX_branch_sites.id FROM XXX_branch_sites WHERE ( XXX_branch_sites.site_hash = '79816c4705e32f3117f1a8f46275de5b' ) [nativecode=1146 ** Table 'phpwstest.XXX_branch_sites' doesn't exist]

I wrestled with trying to track down what code involved in producing those errors for a good while, and then got tired and gave up, not succeeding in determining the source of the errors. I mean, the messages are pretty clear - it is finding the code that needs to be tweaked in the installer to fix it, or deducing a workaround, that turned out to be difficult (at least for me).

To me, the whole exercise was a step *backwards* from the painless installation of the version .09 series of phpWebsite.

I may go back and attempt another run at debugging it, but I'm not real excited about the project as I am personally convinced that Joomla!, Xoops, and Drupal are all more robust solutions for my needs. Hopefully, my experience will help get someone who really wants to use this on DH started in the right direction.

Then again, I may have just been "brain fried" there at the end, and the code/process that generated the errrors at install might be readily apparent if I revisit it with a fresh perspective.

--rlparker