Blank screen when installing ojs on Ubuntu 11.10

[Tiago]

Hi guys,

I'm trying to build a website for a scientific journal and OJS seemed like the ideal solution.

So, I set up a server on my ubuntu 11.10 following the instructions available on ojs website (the tutorial was made on ubuntu 9.04, don't know if it is significant).

However when I try access my localhost/ojs all I get is a blank screen, the address changes to the install file but the screen remains blank.

I've tried using ubuntu 10.04, and set up a LAMP server instead of manual installation described in the tutorial, but nothing seems to work.

So, I would very much appreciate any suggestion to overcome this issue. (I don't have many programming skills, so please excuse my ignorance if this is a basic issue).

Regards,

Tiago

[JasonNugent]

Hi Tiago,

Have you looked in your system logs for Apache and PHP to see what the problem is? My first guess is a permissions issue on your cache directory. The web server needs to be able to write files in there, so it (and sub directories) need to be writable by that user.

regards,
Jason

[pyshen]

APC is turned off I think this is turned on by default in Ubuntu also make sure php5-intl is not installed

[blstzus]

Hi,
I have the same problem as Tiago. I am using Ubuntu 12.04.

Hi Tiago,

Have you looked in your system logs for Apache and PHP to see what the problem is? My first guess is a permissions issue on your cache directory. The web server needs to be able to write files in there, so it (and sub directories) need to be writable by that user.

regards,
Jason

Jason, I have checked the apache2 error log, it says:

[Thu Jul 05 16:35:56 2012] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] ojs2 has produced an error\n Message: WARNING: include(): Failed opening '/var/www/ojs/cache/t_compile/%%7D^7DC^7DC17B21%%install.tpl.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/var/www/ojs/classes:/var/www/ojs/pages:/var/www/ojs/lib/pkp:/var/www/ojs/lib/pkp/classes:/var/www/ojs/lib/pkp/pages:/var/www/ojs/lib/pkp/lib/adodb:/var/www/ojs/lib/pkp/lib/phputf8:/var/www/ojs/lib/pkp/lib/pqp/classes:/var/www/ojs/lib/pkp/lib/smarty:.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear')\n In file: /var/www/ojs/lib/pkp/lib/smarty/Smarty.class.php\n At line: 1256\n Stacktrace: \n Server info:\n OS: Linux\n PHP Version: 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.2\n Apache Version: Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu)\n DB Driver: mysql

I can't find the php error log though. I a newbie in linux and ojs.

APC is turned off I think this is turned on by default in Ubuntu also make sure php5-intl is not installed

Psyhen,
what is APC? How do I check php5-intl is installed or not?
Thank you.

[JasonNugent]

Hi blstzus,

That error message about being unable to include the template is because the permissions on your cache/ directory do not allow your web server to create new templates. That directory needs to be owned (or writable) by the web server. You'd do this with a chmod or chown command, depending on what you wanted to do. I can't give you the exact command to run because I don't know what user your web server software runs as.

Regards,
Jason

[blstzus]

Hi Jason,
Thanks for your reply.
I am still trying, not in the phase to publish it online yet.
I changed the permission so that everybody can create and delete files . I worked.
I know it will not be safe to do that. Do you have any tips on what should I set for that? Any where I can search and read for that?
Sorry. I am really new to Linux and OJS.

Thanks a bunch.
-Aiman-

[JasonNugent]

Hi Aiman,

In that case, your best bet is to determine who your Apache process runs as (which user). In many cases, it will be a user like 'www' or 'nobody' or 'apache'. Once you know that, you can run the following command (as root):

Code: Select all

chown -R TheUser cache/


Where 'TheUser' is the person the apache process runs as. You can determine who that is by looking at the output of the command 'ps auxww' and looking for your apache or httpd processes. The user name will be in the first column. Ignore any lines beginning with 'root' since that is the parent process which spawns the actual apache processes that handle requests for content.

Regards,
Jason