Table serendipity_config not created on install

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dagius
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Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by dagius »

I installed using instructions here: https://docs.s9y.org/docs/users/getting ... ation.html, with database name='s9y'.

Got error "Table 's9y.serendipity_config' doesn't exist", otherwise install completed successfully.

Deleted everything and installed again with same result.
erAck
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by erAck »

Did you create the database before installing?
dagius
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by dagius »

The first time, yes, I created the database (which I named "serendipity") before installing, and got the 'serenditity_config not created' error.

So I deleted the 'serendipity' database and ran the install the 2nd time (with proposed name "s9y"), without creating it in mysql (because the installation page says "Serendipity _will create the required database tables_ and sets up your blog as configured:"). But it did not create the database, so I created "s9y" manually and then reran the install with the same results as the first run.

I'm thinking it might be caused by phpadmin. How do I verify that installation?

BTW, I'm installing on a Raspberry Pi 4, and installed the LAMP stuff manually with instructions I found elsewhere on the Web. (Think it was "How to install Serendipity for students").
dagius
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by dagius »

I still have not figured out why this error has been generated. What is table 'serendipity_config' used for and who is supposed to create it?

Attached is a screen shot of the peculiar way the error is displayed. Peculiar because the error message is repeated many times at the top and side of the screen.

I see that user 'SlidingHorn' had this problem in Feb2018 and apparently solved it by changing the 'character set' from 'latin1' to 'utf-8'.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=23280

How do I do this, after the fact? And will this really solve the problem? (i.e. why don't the S9Y install instructions include this 'requirement'?)
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s9y-error.png
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dagius
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by dagius »

Even though the install was declared 'success' by the installer, I am not able to use s9y because it refuses to let me login, with invalid user/passw error. I know the credentials are correct because I can log into mysql directly with them.

Here are the tables in the s9y database, created by the installer. We know that the table 'serendipity_config' is missing, but are there any other missing tables?

+------------------------------+
| Tables_in_s9y |
+------------------------------+
| serendipity_access |
| serendipity_authorgroups |
| serendipity_authors |
| serendipity_category |
| serendipity_comments |
| serendipity_entries |
| serendipity_entrycat |
| serendipity_entryproperties |
| serendipity_groupconfig |
| serendipity_groups |
| serendipity_images |
| serendipity_mediaproperties |
| serendipity_permalinks |
| serendipity_plugincategories |
| serendipity_pluginlist |
| serendipity_plugins |
| serendipity_references |
| serendipity_referrers |
| serendipity_suppress |
+------------------------------+
dagius
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by dagius »

Just tried installing for a 4th time. Getting same nonsense: a table is missing, yet the installer thinks the install was 'successfully installed'. See screen shot below. Still can't login. (Using same credentials for user/passwd for database (s9y) and admin (blog).
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dagius
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by dagius »

I'm trying to add this debug snippet, as referenced by SlidingHorn in his fix, but I don't seem to have a '/include/db' directory. Does that mean I have not fully installed the LAMP utilities?
SlidingHorn wrote:UPDATE 2: Garvin was helping via Twitter, and had me add the following to my /include/db/mysqli.inc.php
CODE: SELECT ALL

if (mysqli_error($serendipity['dbConn']) != '') {
echo "[DEBUG] " . mysqli_error($serendipity['dbConn']);
echo $sql . "\n";
}
Are there any s9y-specific log files that I should check for more debug info?

Tnx
erAck
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by erAck »

dagius wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 6:31 pm I don't seem to have a '/include/db' directory.
It does not start from the root directory, but is a subdirectory of your Serendipity installation.
dagius
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by dagius »

Ok, found it. So mysqli.inc.php is just a collection of functions. The debug statement looks like it would be used while executing queries. Not clear how it would be used to troubleshoot my problem.

I'm trying to launch phpMyAdmin. Never used it before. http://localhost/phpmyadmin doesn't seem to work from Chromium on my RPi4
dagius
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by dagius »

... also recreated s9y database, this time specifying charset as recommended:
CREATE DATABASE s9y CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;

Still getting 's9y.serendipity_config does not exist' error. :-|
dagius
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by dagius »

I'm finally able to login into my blog (same credentials), but there is a new error:

Code: Select all

(!) The Serendipity JavaScript-library could not be loaded. This can happen due to PHP or Plugin errors, or even a malformed browser cache. To check the exact error please open index.php?/plugin/admin/serendipity_editor.js manually in your browser and check for error messages.
So I checked the .js file and found that it was corrupted by the familiar error messages at the top, apparently injected by some 'builtin' error logger. It's not JavaScript, so that probably explains why it could not be loaded.

Code: Select all

Table 's9y.serendipity_config' doesn't existTable 's9y.serendipity_config' doesn't existTable 's9y.serendipity_config' doesn't exist/* Dynamically fetched templates/2k11/admin/serendipity_editor.js.tpl on 2019-11-22 07:05, called from: include/plugin_api.inc.php:external_plugin */
/*
# Copyright (c) 2003-2005, Jannis Hermanns (on behalf the Serendipity Developer Team)
# All rights reserved.  See LICENSE file for licensing details
*/

(function(serendipity, $, undefined ) {
I'm thinking that my problem is being caused by some 'temporary' debug statement, left in the operational code, which is injecting text messages into the standard output stream, which get caught by the html pages and, evidently, the above .js code.

It is probably the same kind of debug statement that SlidingHorn used to debug his installation (which I didn't use because I didn't know where to put it). So it is probably in mysqli.inc.php module somewhere (which I have not changed). Not clear is the relationship to the missing config table. Maybe a separate issue.

I'm using the unmodified 2.3.2 release, which I downloaded from the s9y.org website, using the 'fresh installation' instructions.

This looks like a bug that needs to be fixed by s9y maintainers. Am I correct?
dagius
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by dagius »

SOLVED! :D
The problem was that the phpMyAdmin tool was installed, but not configured for Apache2. I also used 'expert' installation this time ( but that probably had no part in the solution)

Now all of the tables are present. Here they are (I changed table prefix to 's9y') in case someone else has a similar issue:
MariaDB [s9y]> show tables;

Code: Select all

+---------------------+
| Tables_in_s9y       |
+---------------------+
| s9yaccess           |
| s9yauthorgroups     |
| s9yauthors          |
| s9ycategory         |
| s9ycomments         |
| s9yconfig           |
| s9yentries          |
| s9yentrycat         |
| s9yentryproperties  |
| s9ygroupconfig      |
| s9ygroups           |
| s9yimages           |
| s9ymediaproperties  |
| s9yoptions          |
| s9ypermalinks       |
| s9yplugincategories |
| s9ypluginlist       |
| s9yplugins          |
| s9yreferences       |
| s9yreferrers        |
| s9ysuppress         |
+---------------------+
21 rows in set (0.002 sec)
The reason I didn't configure phpmyadmin, was that I just followed a third party guide for installing LAMP, which recommended "sudo apt install phpmyadmin". Which installed the tool, but didn't configure it, so it couldn't be accessed by Apache2.

I still believe there is a rogue debug statement lurking in the operational code, such that it will probably still inject error statements into the output stream and cause problems. Since I didn't have any installation errors this time, that problem didn't happen.

Thanks to erAck for helping me while tracking down the problem space.

UPDATE:
I was assuming that the debug-style error messages were coming from an S9Y patch, but it is possibly coming directly from the latest Debian 'buster' version of php 7.3 that I installed on my RPi4, which appears to be using a glitchy 'debug' configuration: 7.3.11-1~deb10u1:
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/php7.3

The last really stable Debian release had php7.0, which I see that is no longer supported, so I guess I'll stick with 7.3, which 'works' for me, and will likely give me more ''opportunities" to learn about the inner workings of PHP, which I've never used before.
Last edited by dagius on Sat Nov 23, 2019 4:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
erAck
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by erAck »

Yay! Congrats!
Gryphen
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Re: Table serendipity_config not created on install

Post by Gryphen »

Encountered the same issue with a new install on a Raspberry pi, found an alternate fix https://devanswers.co/manually-upgrade-phpmyadmin/ as there is an issue between PHP7.2 and PHPMYADMIN 4.6 (and above), installed the latest version of PHPMYADMIN from https://www.phpmyadmin.net/downloads/ and the install was as smooth as silk.
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