Geeklog Forums

Sorry, I know this is going to be taken the wrong way, and people are going to get upset and flame me, but I'm more than just a little frustrated right now. I'm sure GeekLog installs and runs beautifully, but I'm giving up on it tonight and I'll try again tomorrow.

First off... the install document tells me to unpack the tarball in my "web tree". For me, this is /var/www/html. Well, that is what I assumed, perhaps it meant /var/www. As I get into the install, it appears that the contents of /var/www/html/geeklog/public_html should be moved to /var/www/html. The instructions don't make this clear, but tell me to hit http://mysite/admin/install/install.php. Since it didn't make the other part clear, this URL is grossly wrong. It should be http://mysite/geeklog/public_html/admin/install/install.php. Am I right about moving public_html's contents, or am I missing something?

Another problem: it tells me to edit config.php. Not a problem. It tells me to edit lib-common.php. Well, that isn't clearly visible, and the documentation doesn't mention where it is, so I start looking in the PHP directories. I can't find it!!! ARGH!

Eventually, I find it, IN PUBLIC_HTML!!! Yeah, I think the documentation should've made that a little more clear.

Tomorrow, I'll try again. If I shouldn't move the public_html contents, let me know. And if I do move them, any suggestions on where I should move the rest of the geeklog files?

If /var/www/html is your document root, then untar at /var/www. Then you will need to move the files from public_html to /var/www/html

Your config.php path will be /var/www/

Only the files in public_html should be in a public directory everything else should be in a protected directory. Usually one directory up from public_html or in your case html.

lib-common.php is in the public_html directory.

Hope this helps.

How about this useful and poorly publicized Wiki Doc?
You should get the picture from this.

Cheers!

Ajay

Never bite the hand that feeds you. You got it easy. I have done all of my installs FTP file by file on dial-up. After the first one, piece of cake. You must read the stuff and sort it out before just banging away. There are more docs on this install than in my Ford manual . Not a flame, just loosen up. Hope you got an install. GeekLog is a GREAT program. William

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William Brandes Consulting
www.wbrandes.com

Fully Agree !!!

One of the best pictures around to understand how GL is working.
A must see for everyone. Maybe we could suggest to Dirk, to add a BIG link to the installation documents.

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Vanrillaer.com - our Family Portal

Actually I didn't find that visual easy to follow. Maybe it is because I unzip all my files locally that I am able to see the arrangement and layout BEFORE I upload. If you unzip on the server, who knows what happens. William

I agree that that's the best way for your first install. I've installed Geeklog dozens of times now and I usually do it this way by FTP.

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Dutch Geeklog sites about camping/hiking:
www.kampeerzaken.nl | www.campersite.nl | www.caravans.nl | www.caravans.net

I agree with garris about the terrible documentation.
After several tries I finally did get GL installed, but I have a suggestions:

Considering how easy it is to make mistakes, the installation script shold include dropping existing tables. Because now after every failed install attempt, I had to go and drop the tables manually. If the install script would do that, it would reduce the frustration level of newbie's - a lot.

The thing is, I started with perfectly well working GL site, but I needed the phpbb-bridge. Then I find out, my GL is too old for it, so I try to upgrade. After a few dozen failed attempts I decide to make a fresh install, and take back ups ad so on, and start over. Then I get the first error - wrong path somewhere I guess - hard to tell because there are so many and they all look the same. So, I edit something (don't ask me what, I really don't have a clue anymore at this point) I run install script again, and find out that I have to go drop the tables that were created in order to even try again. And this goes on g*d knows how many times.
FINALLY I get everything running, and it's time for the phpBB. I even manage to get that installed, and it works, until it's time for the phpBBbridge.
Basically I have now wasted my whole day reading the instructions over and over again, and they are impossible to follow because there's a hundred moves and copies to this and that directory which all look the same and have a mile long path.
I ended up with a non-working phpBB, and now I'm fed up. The instructions may be easy for geeks, guess that's where the name comes from, but for an average user, they are way too complicated. IMO, that should be mentioned in the documentation too, on the first line if possible so that future newbies wouldn't waste their time with GL.

What I have learned form this - I will never touch GL again. It's a shame though because I liked it, but if can't get a phpBB working with it, I have no use for it, and there's enough properly documented systems around.

One thing this thread brings out is that people who have installed GL atleast once realize that its really easy, while the complete newcomer does not feel the same. The disparity being rather large.

Perhaps this calls for making the install instructions a little bit more pedagogical and ironing out any perceived ambiguities. Since the devs have done quite a bit already, I urge people from this thread to use the powers of the Wiki as a collaborative document so that this can act as a source for new documentation in the download.

Garris, after reading through the instructions again (its been years) I see your point that the use of "web tree" and "web root" can lead to a lot of confusion since the two are not explicitly defined and easily mistaken for the same. Let me try to summarize the difference between the two as I understand it:

WEBTREE: For security reasons, it is rare for server admins and hosting providers to allow PHP to access and include all the files on the server. Typically, PHP can access files only withing a certain base directory. For our purposes, this base directory defines the tree of files accessible (but not necessarily viewable as a URL) from the web via PHP and hence the name webtree. In your case this may have been set as /, /var or even /var/www (If running your own server you are probably aware that this is set using the open_basedir variable in php.ini.) If your server were to allow PHP access for all files, your webtree is the entire drive and you could put the GL core files anywhere you choose as long as they are not accessible as a URL.

To answer your question, where you put the core files is really up to the PHP configuration on the server. To be consistent with other users you may leave these in /var/www/geeklog-1.3.11sr1/ (and this forms your $_CONF['path_html'] in config.php)

WEBROOT: A subset of the webtree is the webroot, which is the base directory of all things accessible by PHP as well as URLs. In your case this is /var/www/html (If running your own Apache server, the webroot is identical to the "DocumentRoot" that you set while defining each server or virtualhost instance in your httpd.conf file/s.)

If you are using geeklog as your primary web page (say http://www.example.com), all the files in the public_html folder (/var/www/geeklog1.3.11sr1/public_html for you) get transferred to the webroot (/var/www/html). If not, they can form a subdirectory within. For example, you could put them in /var/www/html/geeklog and access your geeklog pages using the URL http://www.example.com/geeklog.

NOTE: Server admins can force all new files in certain directories to default to restricted read-write permissions. Different special permissions are often used for the webtree and webroot in hosting environments and can lead to different file permission when an archive is unzipped in the webroot vs. the webtree. If you know this is not the case with your server, there is no need to untar the archive "within" the webtree (not webroot) as long as ithe files get there eventually with the correct permissions and folder hierarchy.

Hope that clarifies things a bit.

Ajay

We are going to be releaseing a new version of geeklog soon. If you guys want to grab a copy of latest cvs and play with it and write up some better install and usage docs we would gladly accept them for posiable inclusion into the release tarball. There's lots of new stuff in the new version, though a lot of it is under the hood. If you do something just drop dirk a email or pop into #geeklog on irc.freenode.net irc network if you have any questions.

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glFusion - Technology Fused with Style - www.gllabs.org

For some very loose definition of "soon" ...


As for the documentation: The current install docs was mostly written by a user. There are Alternative installation instructions, also written by other people. If someone would come up with a piece that is notably better than the current instructions and covers more than just one special setup, we'd happily be accepting it.

The worst part, it seems, in the current installation instructions is the bit that tries to explain what public_html is all about (I can say that since I wrote it ...). A lot of new users don't seem to grasp that idea. I've tried a dozen times to come up with something better but couldn't.

Remember, folks, we are Geeks, not writers. And for some of us, English isn't even their first language ...

bye, Dirk