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Architecture / Installation

Architecture / Installation


Looping to Tiki Installer Security Precaution screen on upgrade from 18.1 to 18.3

posts: 27

Hello, I've searched the databases and found other instances of people running into this problem, but most were over 5 years old, so I'm not sure if they would be relevant to this upgrade. The more recent I'm afraid I didn't understand their solution.

I am trying to upgrade from 18.1 to 18.3, but after I putting my initial information it keeps looping me around to the Tiki Installer Security Precaution page and then after I put in my username and password, back to the original install.php page, and then back to the Security Precaution, etc.

In the 12 years that I've used tikiwiki, I've never encountered this problem myself. I put in my database information just as I always have.

I'm afraid I am VERY computer illiterate when it comes to using tikiwiki and so I don't want to try any workarounds on my own without some advice.

Thank you in advance for any help you might be able to give me.

~Jen

posts: 8633 Israel

Hello,

Very hard to debug this case from away...

May be you could delete the files db/local.php (you must note somewhere your credentials) and db/lock so you restart from scratch your update process and set back the credentials for the connection with the database ?

Join our Tiki Open Online Hours session every first, second and fourth Thursday of the month and receive support from a Tiki consultant online for free.

posts: 27

Thank you for your reply. Yes, I did actually end up deleting all of the files and re-installing them on my server, but ran into the same problem.

I thought to try going to 19.1 instead, but I only have PHP 5.6, so I'm going to try upgrading to 18.2 and see what happens.

posts: 27

I was able to upgrade my PHP to 7.2 and so I attempted to upgrade the tiki to 19.1, but I have run into the same problem. The installer is still looping between the installer/upgrade page and the installer security protection screen.

I know it is not locked, because when I go to the tiki-admin.php it is giving me glaring warnings that my database is not upgraded to match the software and that the database is not locked.

I have triple-checked that I am using the correct MySQL database information from my former local.php file.

Do you think it would be safe at this point to simply re-install the older 18.1 files? I would not have to run the installer if I did that, correct? And since it was not running correctly it should be safe to go back to?

Thank you for all that you do,
Jen


posts: 8633 Israel

Ahem...
We are talking about an package release correct ? (not SVN)

The loop look to me like something wrong with the DB access.

  1. DB access
    Check db/local.php and use those credentials to connect to the DB using SSH or PHPmyAdmin to check the credentials are rights and this MySQL user has all the permissions granted.
    If you can access and have all rights on the DB with the user and password then Tiki should be ok.
  2. Files permissions and ownership
    You need to check your files have right permission and ownerships (may be something prevent local.php to be written or updated properly)
    I would use
    Copy to clipboard
    sh setup.sh
    from the tiki folder root - option f. I guess you re-run several the installer already... But in case of...
  3. Update the database
    warnings that my database is not upgraded

    As long as you have this one your attempts will fail as they were a lot of changes from 18 to 19 that need to be applied to the DB.


Again if you are online next Thursday... ;)

Join our Tiki Open Online Hours session every first, second and fourth Thursday of the month and receive support from a Tiki consultant online for free.

posts: 1

Same here! with new installation, get the Tiki Installer Security Precaution LOOP!
Steps mentioned
1. DB Access (is fine!)
2. sh setup.sh done (www-data.www-data)
Problem persists!
Nginx, Tiki creates session in /tmp but obviously cant refer to it or read it, though owner www-data.

posts: 27

Hello Bernard,

Thank you for your reply and apologies for the very late response. Are the online sessions still taking place on the 1st Thursday of the month? I will try to catch the next one if I can't get this loop problem solved before then.

Thank you,
Jen

Bernard Sfez / Tiki Specialist wrote:

Ahem...
We are talking about an package release correct ? (not SVN)

The loop look to me like something wrong with the DB access.

  1. DB access
    Check db/local.php and use those credentials to connect to the DB using SSH or PHPmyAdmin to check the credentials are rights and this MySQL user has all the permissions granted.
    If you can access and have all rights on the DB with the user and password then Tiki should be ok.
  2. Files permissions and ownership
    You need to check your files have right permission and ownerships (may be something prevent local.php to be written or updated properly)
    I would use
    Copy to clipboard
    sh setup.sh
    from the tiki folder root - option f. I guess you re-run several the installer already... But in case of...
  3. Update the database
    warnings that my database is not upgraded

    As long as you have this one your attempts will fail as they were a lot of changes from 18 to 19 that need to be applied to the DB.


Again if you are online next Thursday... ;)

Join our Tiki Open Online Hours session every first, second and fourth Thursday of the month and receive support from a Tiki consultant online for free.


posts: 3665 United States

This "looping" issue is often caused by the session data being stored in a location that Tiki can't access.

You can:

  • Confirm that Tiki has read and write access to the directory in which you store PHP session data

or

  • Change your session storage location to the database (instead of a file).


HTH,

- Rick

Why be a dummy? Get smarty! TikiForSmarties.com
Tiki for Smarties, your source for the best (and only) Tiki books, guides, and tutorials.
posts: 27

Thank you for your suggestions, Rick. I was not able to take the time off to tackle this problem again until this month. I was never able to successfully upgrade from 18.1.

I am now attempting to upgrade to tikiwiki 20.0 with the same looping problem back to the "Tiki Installer Security Precaution" page as last February.

Could you give me an idea on how to do the two things that you suggested?

(1) The session data is default stored in a /tmp folder in the main directory that the tikiwiki folders and files are in, is that correct? Or does it need to be above that in the root directory of the server? In the main directory I did not see such a folder, although there is a /temp folder. I tried also creating a /tmp folder based on this page's information (https://doc.tiki.org/General-Settings). Would user and group read and write permissions be enough, or does it need public read and write permission as well? I tried adding such a folder in both locations with public permissions and no change to the loop. I also made the /temp directory read and write permissions public.

(2) How would I change session data storage to the database instead of a file? Is this something I would need to change in the php.ini file?

Thank you for your time and help,
Jen

(As an addendum, I usually use FTP rather than shell access and have to re-teach myself the basic commands every time I need to use shell because I just don't use Unix or programming. But if it's better for me to try an install or something using shell commands, please let me know.)

Rick Sapir / Tiki for Smarties wrote:

This "looping" issue is often caused by the session data being stored in a location that Tiki can't access.

You can:

  • Confirm that Tiki has read and write access to the directory in which you store PHP session data

or

  • Change your session storage location to the database (instead of a file).


HTH,

- Rick

Why be a dummy? Get smarty! TikiForSmarties.com
Tiki for Smarties, your source for the best (and only) Tiki books, guides, and tutorials.
posts: 3665 United States
caithion wrote:

Could you give me an idea on how to do the two things that you suggested?

(1) The session data is default stored in a /tmp folder in the main directory that the tikiwiki folders and files are in, is that correct? Or does it need to be above that in the root directory of the server? In the main directory I did not see such a folder, although there is a /temp folder. I tried also creating a /tmp folder based on this page's information (https://doc.tiki.org/General-Settings). Would user and group read and write permissions be enough, or does it need public read and write permission as well? I tried adding such a folder in both locations with public permissions and no change to the loop. I also made the /temp directory read and write permissions public.


First, run the Tiki Server Check. The report will tell you the location of the session storage and if it is writable. Look for something like this:
Tikisession

caithion wrote:
(2) How would I change session data storage to the database instead of a file? Is this something I would need to change in the php.ini file?


By default, the session storage is dictated by the php.ini file. If you could log in to Tiki, you can easily change this from the General control panel:
Tikisessionlocation

If you have access to your Tiki's database, you can also change the session_storage row in the tiki_preferences table.

HTH,

- Rick | My Tiki Blog | My Tiki UserPage

Why be a dummy? Get smarty! TikiForSmarties.com
Tiki for Smarties, your source for the best (and only) Tiki books, guides, and tutorials.
posts: 27

I ran the tiki server check and the session storage seems fine. I'm attaching the results here.

Other than the absolute mess that is our character sets (from a long-ago upgrade) and a few things that I usually fix in the hta access file after the upgrades (like mem_limit), the thing that looks like it may be a problem is the PHP CLI version = "The version of the command line executable of PHP (/usr/bin/php) is not the same as the web server version."

But I'm not sure exactly what that means?

Thank you again for all your help,
Jen


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