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Question

As I said in a previous message, I have a TWiki installation (on a Web Hosting environment) that passed the configure stage all right, it register users all right and everything works all right in view mode, but fails to do anything that changes anything: it does not create new topics, does not change/edit existing ones, no edit, no raw edit, no attach - practically nothing that changes anything.

I've contacted the web hosting company and checked with them the error logs: nothing relevant there.

I installed all the dependencies noted in the docs and in the lib dir (the dependencies file).

It can all be checked at:

http://www.berevoescu.com/twiki/bin/view

Any tip, advice etc at this point will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, --bjh

Environment

TWiki version: TWikiRelease04x02x00
TWiki plugins: BeautifierPlugin CalendarPlugin CommentPlugin EditTablePlugin EmptyPlugin InterwikiPlugin PreferencesPlugin RenderListPlugin SlideShowPlugin SmiliesPlugin SpreadSheetPlugin TablePlugin TinyMCEPlugin TwistyPlugin WysiwygPlugin
Server OS: Linux, kernel 2.6.18-53.1.13.el5
Web server: Apache: 1.3.39
Perl version: 5.008008
Client OS:  
Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox 2, MSIE, Safari etc
Categories:  

-- JeanHenryBerevoescu - 22 Apr 2008

Answer

ALERT! If you answer a question - or someone answered one of your questions - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status selector is below the edit box.

The symptoms you describe here and in CannotCreateaNewTopic point to a problem with your registration and login procedure: Apparently your TWikiRegistrationAgent (a predefined user id) can write topics, but you can't.

For every status code of 500 there should be a record in the error log, so it would be nice if you give it here even if you and your hosting company don't consider it relevant.

The typical questions to be checked next would be:

  1. Can you log in?
  2. What are your configuration settings for {UserMappingManager}, {LoginManager}, {PasswordManager}, and {Register}{AllowLoginName}?
  3. If you have an own .htpasswd file: Is the path configured correctly in {Htpasswd}{FileName}? Does the web server's user id have sufficient access permissions?

...and please don't open new support topics for the same symptoms. It will be difficult to track the solution for others who might share your problems.

-- HaraldJoerg - 22 Apr 2008

Well, I think you are right in asking not to open new support topics for the same symptoms, but in the meanwhile it seemed the problem is affecting more functionality than I initially imagined. The hosting company support team told me there are no errors and they cannot give me direct access to the apache logs in order to verify that claim - I'm pretty locked on that side. Here are the answers to the questions: 1. Yes, I can log in and I had a couple more users do registration and login successfully. 2. The settings are: $TWiki::cfg{UserMappingManager} = 'TWiki::Users::TWikiUserMapping'; $TWiki::cfg{LoginManager} = 'TWiki::LoginManager::TemplateLogin'; $TWiki::cfg{PasswordManager} = 'TWiki::Users::HtPasswdUser'; $TWiki::cfg{Register}{AllowLoginName} = 1; 3. I have an .htpasswd file in the data directory and this is the setting for it: $TWiki::cfg{Htpasswd}{FileName} = '/home/hberev07/public_html/twiki/data/.htpasswd'; The webserver user seems to have all the permissions necessary - I played with granting all kind of permission sets for group and other users with no results either.

Thanks, --bjh

-- JeanHenryBerevoescu - 22 Apr 2008

The settings are looking quite fine, I just checked that they seem to work perfectly on my own 4.2 installation (I have used old registration data, though). $TWiki::cfg{Register}{AllowLoginName} = 1; is a bit uncommon for TemplateLogin, but not illegal.

If you don't have access to the server's log file, you might try to have a look at TWiki's own reports written to whatever is configured in {WarningFileName}. For errors related to Perl problems there's usually a stack trace there.

Another idea, since you are using TemplateLogin: Do you have an own section of Apache's httpd.conf file? If so, you must not activate any authentication (AuthType and Require configuration options) anywhere in this file. If you have, Apache's own authentication module will take care, and your hoster might not support that.

-- HaraldJoerg - 22 Apr 2008

I will play with "AllowLoginName" (altough that seems to work - I have the "admin" login mapping all right to TWikiAdminUser).

I don't have access to httpd.conf and I don't have one of my own apparently.

The Warnings file is not showing anything relevant. I only have this one (but it does not seem to be relevant since it concerns the calendar plugin and only started to be logged after I added this plugin a couple of hours ago, long after the problems described before were there):


| 22 Apr 2008 - 12:51 | TWiki::Plugins::CalendarPlugin could not be loaded. Errors were: Can't locate Date/Calc.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /home/hberev07/public_html/twiki/lib . /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i686-linux /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/i686-linux /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.6 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl /home/hberev07/public_html/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//arch /home/hberev07/public_html/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//5.8.8/i686-linux /home/hberev07/public_html/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//5.8.8 /home/hberev07/public_html/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib/) at /home/hberev07/public_html/twiki/lib/TWiki/Plugins/CalendarPlugin.pm line 219. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /home/hberev07/public_html/twiki/lib/TWiki/Plugins/CalendarPlugin.pm line 219. Compilation failed in require at (eval 42) line 1. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 42) line 1.


-- JeanHenryBerevoescu - 22 Apr 2008

Hm. I am short of ideas. Your entry in the warning file is indeed unrelated, but demonstrates that TWiki's logging works if a Perl problem is encountered.

Note that admin and TWikiAdminUser are a special case of login, not very suitable as a proof that $TWiki::cfg{Register}{AllowLoginName} = 1 works. But again, I do not see any problem with that - as long as you can log in as any other registered user as well.

One last try: Can you edit after an explicit log in as JeanHenryBerevoescu? Trying to edit before log in should redirect to the login page, but after a successful login that redirection will not happen. Perhaps there's an issue with redirection?

I am afraid that only your hoster can help with debugging here. If they say "there is no error" then this is definitely not true. A plain request for http://www.berevoescu.com/twiki/bin/edit/ gets me a 500 status code, and 500 means "internal server error". An internal server error is an error, the only question is where it comes from.

-- HaraldJoerg - 22 Apr 2008

Ok. Here it goes: 1. I logged out and tried to edit something while not being logged in at all. The same problem. Come to think about it, I did wonder at some point if some sort of redirection issue might be involved here - but again, where do I start looking? smile

2. On the errors I absolutely agree - there has to be something in there and HTTP 500 is too general to tell anything.

Any hints/tips on where to look in connection with the redirection?

Thanks, --bjh

-- JeanHenryBerevoescu - 22 Apr 2008

BTW: I just wrote the Web Hosting company that if I don't have this issue solved I might consider moving to a hosting company that has full TWiki support (they have phpWiki and tikiWiki - but they are pretty poor in features - nothing close to TWiki). It's a try, but I'm not sure they will really go deeper into details for the time being and I'm really running out of time.

-- JeanHenryBerevoescu - 22 Apr 2008

I think I have it working. There is one little issue left: while working on this access/redirect issue, I somehow broke the graphic display of the site - the skin is not showing at all and the page components are scattered weirdly on the screen.

Any idea what is the problem (I had something similar yesterday and I kind of remember it had something to do with not following sym links or something in that line, but I don't remember where did I change and what, in order to make look nice.

Thanks,

Jean

-- JeanHenryBerevoescu - 22 Apr 2008

Fixed it. It was the uncommenting of:


# # require valid-user #
that caused the problem. I did comment it back and it is all right now.

-- JeanHenryBerevoescu - 23 Apr 2008

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Topic revision: r9 - 2008-04-23 - JeanHenryBerevoescu
 
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