Installing a new site

[sfatula]

That is not what is happening. application_top.php does a check for includes/configure.php which it then claims does not exist under mod_fcgid. This is easily shown by adding a simple die statement. But /webroot/includes/configure.php DOES exist, and is readable. This works fine outside of mod_fcgid. click here does nothing other than display the screen below. Nothing has been done except the extract to public_html, and, the rename of the 2 dist-configure files.

Hello. Thank you for loading Zen Cart®.

You are seeing this page for one or more reasons:

1. This is your first time using Zen Cart® and you haven't yet completed the normal Installation procedure.
   If this is the case for you, Click here to begin installation.
2. Your /includes/configure.php and/or /admin/includes/configure.php file contains invalid path information and/or invalid database-connection information.
   If you recently edited your configure.php files for any reason, or maybe moved your site to a different folder or different server, then you'll need to review and update all your settings to the correct values for your server.
   Additionally, if the permissions have been changed on your configure.php files, then maybe they're too low for the files to be read.
   Or the configure.php files could be missing altogether.
   Or your hosting company has recently changed the server's PHP configuration (or upgraded its version) then they may have broken things as well.
   See the Online FAQ and Tutorials area on the Zen Cart® website for assistance.
3. Additional *IMPORTANT* Details: includes/configure.php not found

[DrByte]

Actually, your Click Here does slightly more. You'll notice that the info for point #3 changes depending whether it's running from inside zc_install or not.

What's happening is your server isn't properly allowing PHP to read the path of the file being executed.

I've seen this happen with the occasional server running Nginx and PHP-FPM, and that was always resolved by properly configuring paths in Nginx and paths/ports in PHP-FPM.

Two things to try:
a) empty the contents of the configure.php files that you renamed from dist-configure.php .... just to ensure that it's not getting confused by the defaults it's reading from inside those (it tries to re-use your own data in case you're re-installing on the same server, but in your case none of the existing data is relevant, so emptying the files rules out that particular possibility)

b) The zc_install/index.php has some very simple code in it for setting DIR_FS_ROOT and DIR_FS_INSTALL, which your server doesn't seem to be playing properly with. Feel free to alter the code to suit your server's special needs.

[sfatula]

It is a standard Centos base install with mod_fcgid, not fpm not nginx. You are correct, it is not finding the path correctly. It could be a bug even in some version being used by Centos, have not gotten that far. Still, very strange, we have several dozen sites (not Zen, our own software for various company purposes) running just fine using the same software of course being the same server.

Emptying did not help.

I don't see any code in zc_install/index.php dealing with DIR_FS_ROOT. There is some stuff in some ajax files.

Here's another curiosity. I downloaded 1.5.3 from your download site, and, extracted into public_html, and, did not rename anything, just went to the url, and, the welcome screen comes up, then the license page, etc. Didn't rename a thing, though, the procedure may have been different previously. So, 1.5.3 installs fine. So, something is different about 1.5.5a installer.

I do appreciate your thoughts here BTW. It's just been very frustrating as the install has always been pretty much trivial.

So, I wondered if 1.5.5.a would do the same, it does not.

So, there is something that has changed in 1.5.5a that breaks it (at a minimum for me) on a new install (at a minimum) when using mod_fcgid.

[DrByte]

I don't see any code in zc_install/index.php dealing with DIR_FS_ROOT. There is some stuff in some ajax files.

I dunno what file you looked at. See: zc_install/index.php

[sfatula]

Ok, well, I see that there, but download from:

https://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?19-download

That is version 1.5.5a, not 1.5.5, is that the problem? 1.5.5.a presents itself as the current version???

If you download that from your site, you will see index.php is not as you show it to be.... At least for me.

Mine starts with this.... Maybe it's the unzip program

<?php
/**
* index.php represents the hub of the Zen Cart MVC system
*
* Overview of flow
* <ul>
* <li>Load application_top.php - see {@tutorial initsystem}</li>
* <li>Set main language directory based on $_SESSION['language']</li>
* <li>Load all *header_php.php files from includes/modules/pages/PAGE_NAME/</li>
* <li>Load html_header.php (this is a common template file)</li>
* <li>Load main_template_vars.php (this is a common template file)</li>
* <li>Load on_load scripts (page based and site wide)</li>
* <li>Load tpl_main_page.php (this is a common template file)</li>
* <li>Load application_bottom.php</li>
* </ul>

[sfatula]

Thanks for that github link. Curiously, on Centos 7 (pseudo code, not actual dirs but to give you the idea):

cd public_html
unzip pathtothezensource.zip yields a bad extract with at least the zc_install/index.php as shown

However....

cd thedirwiththezipfile
unzip -d public_html thepathtozipfile yields a good extract with the correct index.php

Certainly, far from what I expected. The install now proceeds as normal it appears. What a waste of time!

BTW - it appears the zip was created on Windows, so, I did:

cd public_html
find . -type f -name '*php' -exec dos2unix {} \;

To get rid of the annoying ^M end of lines. Not required, but, they get in the way of editing.

[DrByte]

Thanks for confirming that the problem was a bad download / unzip on your server.


No, we never build zips with Windows: it always messes them up.

One could also obtain a zip from github, but would have to do sha validation using their generated sha values instead of the ones on the ZC home page.