cannot activate extensions

outbreak · July 2006

i installed the new release of v1, downloaded all the awesome extensions i wanted to use, uploaded them to my server, and then tried to check the box to activate them. when i check the box, nothing happens and the extension does not activate.

what could be wrong?

edit: also it seems that the "you have not checked for updates" message will not go away after my updated install.

garymardell · July 2006

aaa have you checked your chmod? that may cause the extensions not to isntall and the checked for updates gets stored in a file. thats all i can think of.

outbreak · July 2006

everything seems fine. is it a cookie problem perhaps?

garymardell · July 2006

nah it cant be, as the checking for updates things saves it all in settings file of when you last checked and such. And the extensions saves what has been activated to extensions.php somewhere. It must be something like chmod issues.

outbreak · July 2006

actually, i just tried it in a different browser after clearing my cache and history, and it seems like it was in fact a cookie issue. the extensions turn on now, i'm not sure why that would make a difference. the updates message still did not go away though and i checked all the folder access info to make sure everything was ok. very odd.

garymardell · July 2006

oo i dont know then, thats ver strange. Better wait for someone who knows what they are doing :P

Mark · July 2006

When you check for updates, a setting is added to your conf/settings.php file that contains a timestamp indicating when you checked for the update. The update reminder message then looks at that date and how often you want to be reminded when deciding to appear or not.

If you check for updates and the message doesn't disappear, I'd bet dollars to donuts that your permissions aren't working properly.

Now, Vanilla is written so that it *should* catch those errors, but depending on different server settings and configurations, it may fail to do so (as it appears to be doing in your case). Typically I will put @ symbols in front of php functions that cause nasty error messages. That will allow the error to happen without reporting any problems. Then I'll check to see what the outcome of the function was by it's return variable or by looking at the $php_errormsg variable (Which contains the last error message to occur) and report a problem based on those. Sometimes those values don't return anything that indicates an error - and that is when things appear to work properly, but don't.

The offending code in this instance is in library/Framework/Framework.Class.ConfigurationManager.php:

   function SaveSettingsToFile($File) {
      // Open for writing only.
      // Place the file pointer at the beginning of the file and truncate the file to zero length. 
      // If the file does not exist, attempt to create it.
      $FileContents = $this->UpdateConfigurationFileContents($File);
      if ($this->Context->WarningCollector->Iif()) {
         $FileHandle = @fopen($File, "wb");
         if (!$FileHandle) {
            $this->Context->WarningCollector->Add(str_replace("//1", $File, $this->Context->GetDefinition("ErrOpenFile")));
         } else {
            if (!@fwrite($FileHandle, $FileContents)) $this->Context->WarningCollector->Add($this->Context->GetDefinition("ErrWriteFile"));
         }
         @fclose($FileHandle);
      }
      return $this->Context->WarningCollector->Iif();
   }

If you want to figure out what's wrong, the easiest way I can think of is to remove all of the @ symbols in that function and then go try to do an update check again. If the server encounters any errors when trying to write to the configuration file, they should be barfed onto the screen so you can figure out exactly what's going wrong.

outbreak · July 2006

great, thanks mark. i'll figure it out.

Mark · July 2006

Keep posting on here so others can see if/how you resolve it.

outbreak · July 2006

well, i completely cleared my cache, history, and temp files and that seemed to clear up the extensions issue. not really sure why that would have an effect. after i disabled the updates and then re-enabled it, it started to work properly. the only thing that seems strange is that after fixing the update reminder and i click "check for updates," i get the following message:

"You are not running the latest version of Vanilla.

Because you are using a pre-release, all you need to do is download the Vanilla package and copy the new files on top of your existing files. You do not need to run the upgrade procedure on your installation of Vanilla.

You can download Vanilla from http://getvanilla.com."

leiza · July 2006

I have the "you are not running the latest version of Vanilla" message still, too. I think the main reason is what I did: I backed up my files before deleting them from the webserver and uploading the latest version. I followed the procedure where I renamed my /appg/settings.php file to old_settings.php and uploaded it to the /conf folder. When I tried to upgrade to the the pre-release to the current version, it would send me to the folder /setup/setup/index.html. So, I just went back and put the old old_settings.php that was in my backed-up /conf folder into the new /conf folder. This time, the upgrade went as planned, but since I just used the old old_settings.php file I had before, it was still reading that I had the pre-release version. I hope that makes sense. I guess the question for me is, how to fix that error that sends me to /setup/setup/index.html folder?

Mark · July 2006

I had made a mistake in the update check script on lussumo.com. If you check now it should tell you that you are up to date...

leiza · July 2006

Thanks, Mark!

Bozzy · July 2006

I couldn't activate my extensions so I cleared the cache & history and now I cannot even sign in!!! http://www.unrulypolitics.com I upgraded from 0.9.2

Mark · July 2006

If you can't activate extensions, then you've got your permissions set up incorrectly on the conf folder.

Bozzy · July 2006

Why can't I signin? Why does the signin link just refresh the page? Something is wrong with people.php I think.

ccmehil · July 2006

Hey Bozzy we get that you have a problem but come on stop writing the same thing into every thread remotely related.

Check your file permissions for the different directories and sub folders also check the owner of the files, if that doesn't seem to work restore your backup and go back to 0.9.2.6 and give Mark and the guys a chance to figure it out.

Bozzy · July 2006

I've checked the permissions of every file the upgrade process told me to check... and they are correct.. something else just went wrong... I turned off 'public browsing' of the forum and now the browser won't even connect to my site... http://www.unrulypolitics.com Does anybody have anything to say or are they just going to ridicule me? <blockquote> Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. </blockquote> Locked out again!

ccmehil · July 2006

Try it with IE, sounds funny but I had a problem that in FF I could not get some features to work the AJAX stuff was just not working properly. In IE though it was working and I was able to set some config stuff and now I can use FF normally.

giginger · July 2006

I just looked at your site and it's just an advertising site. Is this correct?

Mark · July 2006

I've started a private discussion with bozzy and I'll get him sorted out.

ccmehil · July 2006

great to hear!

jacmgr · July 2006

I am having same problem with extensions not activiating. When I check them they appear to activate, but extensions.php is not updated, and of course their effects are not shown. When you go back to setup extensions, none are checked. Upgraded from pre-relaease. All discussions and comments appear fine. All users afine. All categories fine. Just seems to be problem with extensions. 1) the conf folder and all contents within it are 777 2) Check for updates shows me running current version. www.therentalcalendar.net/forum

lech · July 2006

jacmgr, try bringing down the permissions for the files within the /conf/ directory to 666 and see if that helps, some servers don't like granting that level of permission to files which could be executed by anyone who has access to them or not.

Mark · July 2006

Good point, lech.

I've just updated the troubleshooting tips to say as much...

jacmgr · July 2006

Ok. Here is new info. Changeing extensions.php to 666 (or anything else) has same effect. No sticky extensions. Changing the conf folder to anything less than 777 results in the vanilla setup screen appearing. I have been using this host for a long time. I have always been able to change permissions through ftp etc... for many different kinds of software (mambo, joomla, open realty mostly) Is there instructions for doing a complete fresh install and then connecting back to the original database with all the discussions, users, comments? Don;t know if the phpinfo tells you anything, but here it is: http://therentalcalendar.net/forum/phpinfo.php Browser: IE 6.0 I appreciate your help. Thankx jacmgr

Mark · July 2006

Are you not just applying the 777 to the conf folder, but also the php files within it?

timberford · July 2006

im getting the exact same issues as jacmgr. i have found that extensions can be turned on manually but i cannot use the vanilla admin to enable/disable them. the permissions are set to 777 for all files in the conf folder and the folder itself. incidently it was working fine until i installed the panel lists extension, it broke my forum so i went in and manually removed it from the conf file. ever since then the extension manager has been broken.

timberford · July 2006

ok i just tried switching permissions to 666 for the conf folder and all files inside. no joy. the ownership user and group are the same for all files as well, so it's not that.

jacmgr · July 2006

quote: "Are you not just applying the 777 to the conf folder, but also the php files within it? " Applied to conf folder as well as files in the conf folder (and all permutations). The vanilla set up screens only appear if the conf folder is set less than 777. Really would like to do a frsh install but keep my existing database of users, comments, discussions, but not sure how to do that.

Mark · July 2006

@Timberford and jacmgr: What operating systems and versions are your servers? and php? and apache?

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