Fresh Installation Issue (Fatal Error in Gdn_Auth.StartAuthenticator)

eroomydna

Hey all,

I hate asking these types of questions but I'm stuck! I've downloaded the version of vanilla (core-2-0-18-8) from vanillaforums.org to my webserver and unpacked the archive. I've chown'd the files recursively to give the ownership to the webserver. The requirements have been met. I'm running PHP 5.3.3 and MySQL 5.1 with PDO installed and MySQL PDO enabled. Mod_rewrite also present.

[root@s16820710 answers]# ls -la
total 96
drwxrwxrwx 11 user group   4096 Jul 23 09:28 .
drwxrwxrwx 32 user group  4096 Jul 23 08:24 ..
drwxr-xr-x  6 user group   4096 Apr  5 12:49 applications
-rwxr-xr-x  1 user group   6787 Apr  5 12:49 bootstrap.php
drwxr-xr-x  3 user group   4096 Apr  5 12:49 cache
drwxr-xr-x  2 user group   4096 Jul 23 09:33 conf
-rwxr-xr-x  1 user group    292 Apr  5 12:49 .gitignore
-rwxr-xr-x  1 user group    489 Apr  5 12:49 .htaccess
-rwxr-xr-x  1 user group   3287 Apr  5 12:49 index.php
drwxr-xr-x  3 user group   4096 Apr  5 12:49 js
drwxr-xr-x  5 user group   4096 Apr  5 12:49 library
-rwxr-xr-x  1 user group  18009 Apr  5 12:49 LICENSE.txt
drwxr-xr-x  3 user group   4096 Apr  5 12:49 locales
drwxr-xr-x 20 user group   4096 Apr  5 12:49 plugins
-rw-r--r--  1 user group    210 Apr  5 12:49 .project
-rwxr-xr-x  1 user group   4105 Apr  5 12:49 readme.html
drwxr-xr-x  5 user group   4096 Apr  5 12:49 themes
drwxr-xr-x  2 user group   4096 Apr  5 12:49 uploads

Nothing complex here. So following the installation guide I'm told to navigate to the root of the domain... forum.domain.com which should place me on the installation/setup screen. This is when I get a bonk message.

I've amended the config to show me the precise error and I get the following output;

Fatal Error in Gdn_Auth.StartAuthenticator();

Undefined variable: ForceStart
The error occurred on or near: /var/www/vhosts/domain/answers/library/core/class.auth.php
30:       parent::__construct();
31:    }
32:    
33:    public function StartAuthenticator() {
34:       if (!C('Garden.Installed', FALSE) && !$ForceStart) return;
35:       // Start the 'session'
36:       Gdn::Session()->Start(FALSE, FALSE);
37:       
38:       // Get list of enabled authenticators
Backtrace:
[/var/www/vhosts/domain/forum/library/core/class.auth.php:34] PHP::Gdn_ErrorHandler();
[/var/www/vhosts/domain/forum/bootstrap.php:168] Gdn_Auth->StartAuthenticator();
[/var/www/vhosts/domain/forum/index.php:41] PHP::require_once();

I couldn't find further direction via the forums or googles. My initial thoughts are around 'Garden' not being installed but then why would that not be mentioned in the install guides or be more prolific 'installation problems' posts on the community questions/forum articles.

I would appreciate some pointers here.

eroomydna

FYI anyone having the same problem, I've moved past this issue by amending the bootstrap.php file to remove the call Gdn_Auth->StartAuthenticator();

Comment out the line 168
``[/var/www/vhosts/domain/forum/bootstrap.php:168] Gdn_Auth->StartAuthenticator();

This allowed me to run the installer. Now I've completed the installation at least and am testing with the call enabled again. More to follow ...

UnderDog

Did you install in /answers or in /forum? Did you move files around and then install?

Did you adjust the .htaccess file after installing in a subdomain?

eroomydna

I installed to /answers. The subdirectory is the root directory of the subdomain. I half-assed obfuscated my domain-specific paths. So everything was unzipped and remained within the original dir. The 'StartAuthenticator()' call broke the route to the initial setup.

peregrine

maybe they need an isset on $ForceStart so you can debug bonk errors without failing on variables that aren't initialised.

 if (!isset($ForceStart))
           $ForceStart = "";

 if (!C('Garden.Installed', FALSE) && !$ForceStart) return;