[Not a bug] System Inspection? PHP 5.6 > PHP 5.5 plus .htaccess warning vacillates

Maybe these are bugs or maybe it's just me. But it sure is bugging me. What do you think?

Here's a link to a screen capture showing the issues . . .
http://prnt.sc/b00qrf

1. When I click Refresh about half the time I get the above screen and half the time the warning about .htaccess does NOT appear.

2. I'm using PHP 5.6 yet I get the warning about PHP version shown in the above screen capture.

I've tried all PHP 5.6 options shown in the below screen capture but always get the same warning about the PHP version not being at least 5.5.

http://prnt.sc/b00vr6

Let me know what you think.
Thanks!

My info . . .
v1.5.5
Fresh install
Used Filezilla sftp to upload zen-cart-v1.5.5-03292016.zip to the webserver and then used cpanel Extract to unzip it.
Then run zc_install

In the /logs/ folder will be some zcInstall-xxxxxxx.log files containing system inspection results. Please post their contents. There will be at least 2-3 files every time you run zc_install.

Also, what type of server are you on??
Linux or windoes

DrByte, As requested, here's a link to a screen capture of the zcInstall-xxxxxxx.log files

http://prnt.sc/b09ki5

I'm only showing one because they are all identical except for the time stamp. I guess they are identical because I did not proceed with the installation but merely refreshed the page many times to observe the vacillating warning message.

kobra, server is Linux Apache

Zean:

DrByte, As requested, here's a link to a screen capture of the zcInstall-xxxxxxx.log files

http://prnt.sc/b09ki5

I'm only showing one because they are all identical except for the time stamp. I guess they are identical because I did not proceed with the installation but merely refreshed the page many times to observe the vacillating warning message.
That shows a zcInstallDEBUG log, which reports PHP warnings/errors. In the case of warnings, installation is not halted. So, that was informational only. (it's telling you that you supplied a username in your configure.php (or PHP set a default MySQL username, which is unusual), but did not supply a password (it's blank in your configure.php), and when it tried to test whether you had a pre-installed database or detect what version the database schema was at, it couldn't connect to find out).

But that's not the same as the other zcInstall-timestamp.log files (without "DEBUG" in the filename) which report the results of system inspection, including what PHP version it's detected on the server along with things like PHP capabilities, htaccess test results, and more. That's the log I wanted to see ... or at least point you to see.

I suspect the PHP version detection issue is a result of your server not setting the PHP version to work universally across your entire domain, or perhaps a specific older version has been set specifically on your 'zcdemo155' or 'zcdemo155/shop' directory.

As far as the .htaccess support, that's done by PHP making a CURL call to try to access .php files contained below your /includes/ folder which the .htaccess rules are designed to block (for security reasons, since there's no need for site-visitors to directly access any PHP files under the /includes folder). If the warning is NOT shown, then it means htaccess blocked the request. If the warning IS shown then it means the attempt to access the files was not denied (ie: "denied" is interpreted by zc_install receiving a 403-forbidden response, or at least not a normal "200 OK" response like permitted files would report).

Anyway, that's a lot of tech info that may or may not help you sort out what odd thing is happening on your server.

Thank you DrByte.

Looking in the catalog/logs directory the only log files are the DEBUG type: zcInstallDEBUG-xxx-xxx.log
There are no zcInstall-timestamp.log files . . . they all have DEBUG in the filename.

Am I looking in the wrong directory? Or, does the absence of the zcInstall-timestamp.log files tell you anything in and of itself?

BTW, I appreciate the tech info. I'm pretty much an expert at working in domains in which I'm ignorant by dint of perseverance. So a little well placed info (which you are very good at providing) helps a lot.

You could add a phpinfo script to your site to get PHP to tell you what version it's detecting.

Create a new file in your zc_install folder: zc_install/phpinfo.php
with this content:```

Thanks DrByte.

1. Version bug is at Bluehost not Zen Cart
   It was PHP version 5.2.17
   Bluehost's apparently has a bug in their script ( http://prnt.sc/b00vr6 ) for changing the PHP version.
   So I manually edited the /public_html/.htaccess file to invoke the correct PHP version. Which as far as I know is all that's required.

phpinfo() now says It is PHP 5.6.17

The bug in the Bluehost script is that although it added the code to the .htaccess file to invoke PHP 5.6.17, It didn't comment out or otherwise disable the legacy code invoking the old PHP version 5.2.17 and at the same time misleads the user by claiming that PHP 5.6 is in use. http://prnt.sc/b00vr6
Ironically, I contacted BlueHost support to confirm the version that I was using and even they were fooled by this. Bluehost support ain't what it use to be. So 1 problem solved! Thanks so much!

2. That still leaves the mystery of the vacillating .htaccess warning implying that sometimes direct access to the PHP files under the /includes folder was properly blocked and sometimes it was NOT blocked.

Zean:

2. That still leaves the mystery of the vacillating .htaccess warning implying that sometimes direct access to the PHP files under the /includes folder was properly blocked and sometimes it was NOT blocked.
   I wonder if it was related to "which" PHP type you used? It could be that FastCGI bypasses some of the apache components (that's just a wild guess).
   Whatever the issue, I suspect it's hosting related as well ... since there's nothing in ZC that's randomly gonna treat it differently on each click.