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Installation Issue
Hi there,
I just bought my license today for vanilla Perch, and I’ve been following the wonderful “Installing Perch” video series on YouTube. It works on my machine as far as copying the Perch folder into the desired directory and trying to run it on my local host.
I’m using Ubuntu and trying to start up Perch for the first time on a locally hosted Apache 2 server (also my first time setting up this type of server). I copied the whole Perch folder into the /var/www/html directory that Apache told me to, and I cannot figure out how to open that first configuration page shown on the video where you test your DB compatibility.
I have tried accessing the folder from the browser and it just gives me a directory list of what’s in the folder. I’ve removed everything else from /var/www/html except for the Perch folder and it still won’t load anything; when I click on a php file, it just downloads it (again).
Thank you!
If you're looking to run the setup again rather than just move the site you've already started, make sure to remove the settings from the
perch/config/config.phpfile. If that file is empty, Perch will automatically start the setup process.Hi Drew,
Thanks for your reply! This is my first time setting up Perch, so I have no other sites. I cleared everything out and re-downloaded the files (version 3) from the License page on the Perch website. I extracted the .zip file and threw the whole folder titled Perch_v3.1.2 into my /var/www/html folder. I can see the directory on my localhost, but when I click on the Perch folder, I get a server 500 error. I can see, however, that it's trying to automatically go to https://localhost/perch_v3.1.2/perch/setup/server/. I've made sure the config file is empty, and nothing has been changed since I re-downloaded the .zip file.
Ok, so probably first thing to do is to move everything up a level so your
perchfolder is athttps://localhost/perch.It would then be running setup at
https://localhost/perch/setup.Once that change is made, you'll still get the 500 status, but that's ok. Next thing to do is to look in your web server log to see what error that status pertains to. There'll be a new copy of the error for every time you get the 500 status. Let us know what that error message says.
Alright, I've moved everything up a level. It seems to want to open the search.php and example.php (even though they're both blank) without any error. I've checked the error log for Apache2 and it says:
[Thu Sep 13 11:44:09.245802 2018] [mpm_event:notice] [pid 31563:tid 139909240810432] AH00491: caught SIGTERM, shutting down
as the first instance of an error (there are several duplicates of this), and then the next is:
[Thu Sep 13 13:04:04.973004 2018] [php7:error] [pid 8862] [client ::1:40506] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function mysqli_report() in /var/www/html/perch/core/lib/PerchDB_MySQLi.class.php:17\nStack trace:\n#0 /var/www/html/perch/core/lib/PerchDB.class.php(20): PerchDB_MySQLi->__construct(NULL)\n#1 /var/www/html/perch/core/lib/PerchFactory.class.php(28): PerchDB::fetch()\n#2 /var/www/html/perch/core/lib/PerchSettings.class.php(18): PerchFactory->__construct()\n#3 /var/www/html/perch/core/lib/PerchLang.class.php(17): PerchSettings::fetch()\n#4 /var/www/html/perch/core/lib/PerchLang.class.php(44): PerchLang->__construct()\n#5 /var/www/html/perch/core/lib/api/PerchAPI.class.php(21): PerchLang::fetch()\n#6 /var/www/html/perch/setup/env.php(80): PerchAPI->__construct(1, 'core')\n#7 /var/www/html/perch/setup/server/index.php(5): include('/var/www/html/p...')\n#8 {main}\n thrown in /var/www/html/perch/core/lib/PerchDB_MySQLi.class.php on line 17
Ok, that all looks pretty dire. Have you checked your server meets the minimum requirements?
Not sure how to check; I thought the check was once that original config page opens. It’s running the latest versions of Apache2, PHP, and MySQL, and all 3 have had fresh installations yesterday and I created a new blank database on the MySQL this morning.
What's the difference between when it was working and now?
It’s never worked—this is my first time trying to set it up.
Ok, sorry, I misunderstood.
Do you have the PDO extension installed for PHP? It's a default extension, but it's possible to disable it.
Yep, it's installed and active. If Perch is really going to be this much trouble to run even locally, I may just ask for a refund and use another CMS.
It's not usually any trouble! Did you verify it worked before purchasing?
Nope, I just jumped in after seeing the wonderful how-to series on your website and loved the concept from the beginning; it would be perfect for my current client's site, if only I could get it to work. Perhaps I'll try uninstalling my LAMP stack and try XAMPP instead (I'm using Linux Ubuntu distro).
Our servers all run Ubuntu, so you should be good.
Alright, I've tried everything I can; where do I request a refund?
You should send us an email with the order reference.