OMGWTFBBQ: I need help with upgrading

[dianna_wills]

I am starting to feel like throwing my Sony VAIO out of the window now.

Upgraded to Serendipity 0.7-rc1 from v.6 something after seeing the frequent:

Fatal error: session_start(): Failed to initialize storage module: user (path: /tmp) in /home/nurdiyan/public_html/blog/index.php on line 9

Apparently, this is not solved by upgrading to v.7 because the same error keeps haunting me. And the worse thing is that:

The Archieve went blank (I would appreciate it very much if you didn't delete it at the first place), and clicking the "Add entry" would forward me Ta-da: Nowhere, good old 404.

And I am seriously thinking of, not only throwing out the Sony VAIO, but also jumping from the second storey uni hall now. Yes, I need help.

http://blog.nurdiyana.com

[dianna_wills]

Would it be possible to reinstall everything using the same database (left untouched)? This way, no files missed (I am not sure), and really; and I really want to see this thing go:

Fatal error: session_start(): Failed to initialize storage module: user (path: /tmp) in /home/nurdiyan/public_html/blog/index.php on line 9

And the failing to load the CSS properly. Can't you make it a really simple no-nonsense and no unnecessary redirecting? Why do you have to even put *.css.php just to make the server process more than just simply send the css directly to the user?

Why do you have to make things more difficult based on the language that is soo easy to learn and understand? Why?

[tadpole]

Is /tmp writeable by the web server, and is there space available on that partition? Are you using PHP >= 4.3.3?

There are several reasons for using a PHP file to send CSS. The first is that there is an event hook in that file which is vital to many plugin's basic functionality. For instance, BBCode styles its output via that hook (of course, they can be overridden from the style.css file). Also, string replacement is performed so templates can reference files (for images and such) that are dependant on the theme.

It sounds like your problems are due to a misconfigured server, not bad code in s9y. I'm not sure where you're having problems with CSS not loading properly--perhaps you could give us a more specific description of the problem?

[tadpole]

Sorry, that should be PHP > 4.3.3, not PHP >= 4.3.3

[dianna_wills]

The last time I checked, 20.61 Megabytes are available for me (I am hosted). And the PHP version is 4.3.8.

I still can't view http://blog.nurdiyana.com/archives, http://blog.nurdiyana.com/entries and any one-entry view page. All 404s.

[garvinhicking]

Please check your serendipity configuration and if you enabled the rewrite setting to "use apache errorhandling". Set that setting to 'None', and then you should get no 404s.

We use the apache errorhandling to redirect pretty URLs to their corresponding PHP file.

However, the error about the "user storage module" has nothing to do with Serendipity, it's a problem with your webserver/provider; please ask them to see to fix the error for you. Usually this is because the /tmp directory is full, like tadpole pointed out. Tell that to your provider, please.

Good luck,
Garvin.

[dianna_wills]

http://blog.nurdiyana.com/index.php?serendipity[page]=2 went white. Forced-refresh (Ctrl F5) doesn't help. http://blog.nurdiyana.com/index.php?serendipity[page]=3 did the same thing too.

(The likelihood of it, CSS, failing is greater than the times when it won't)

It seems that the httpd.conf can't be changed (no thanks to the Support people). So, I would need to set up the .htaccess.

Where should I redirect the single-entry-view page to? And the /entries?

[dianna_wills]

Disabled the Use Apache Errorhandling. Everything works now. Except for that tiny CSS (recurring) problem.

I have taken out all trackings from the main page; so the page will be 'lighter' to load. But I still get few problem of White pages every now and then..

Couldn't the CSS be @import instead?

[garvinhicking]

Hi Dianna!

Disabled the Use Apache Errorhandling. Everything works now. Except for that tiny CSS (recurring) problem.

Great! But I've looked at your blog and reloaded it about 20 times, and don't have any problems with the CSS!

Which browser are you using?

To modern browsers (>=IE5, >Netscape4, any Mozilla/Firefox) it makes no difference if CSS is @imported or used properly via the link href-attribute...

If you get a white page, please immediately view the HTML sourcecode (View > Page Source in Mozilla) and see if the sourcecode contains any HTML text. My guess is that your webserver's PHP application may sometimes fail and not deliver any page...

Regards,
Garvin.

[dianna_wills]

The white page means the background colour is white (no CSS being loaded) and the HTML is still there. Is there in any way to force the CSS to be loaded later than the page (the technique I see; to ensure that CSS does load all the time; is from http://www.manchester.ac.uk/ website; especially when you do searching -- where the probable result of the search might be long).

Isn't that because they use @import?

[garvinhicking]

Again, which browser are you using? I can't reproduce the problem you have.

The @import hack was used previously because Netscape4 browsers interpretet the referenced StyleSheets, but were unable to @import any Stylesheets. So using @import you could effectively tell Netscape4 to only render HTML and no CSS.

Nowadays, @import or the <link href> method are syntactically identical. See http://www.createwebmagic.com/css101/le ... =part3.inc for more information.

So, it should be a browser/proxy/caching/webserver-setup issue you're facing; if you could tell me the specific setups of your client I could try to see if I can reproduce it...

Regards,
Garvin.