ImageMagic supports .jpg and .gif but fails during setup...?

[znapper]

Hi

After numerous attempts on installing the gallery and changing and upgrading both php, apache and mysql, I found out that the zip package containing the 1.4.9 release is missing a "im.gif" file used to verify ImageMagic functionality. The php scripts cannot find the gif and then flags ImageMagic to be present, but that php is not allowed to use it.
This leads many to belive that php is running in safe mode, which it usually isn't if you run your own server.

I don't have the excact error message here, but it is clear that a gif file called im.gif is missing in the albums/userpics folder and that this causes the ImageMagic test to fail, even though it is working fine.

My workaround was simply to copy a gif file (any really) into the userpics folder rename it to im.gif, chown it to apache.apache and chmod it to 777 then run the test again, passing with flying colours and having thumbnails and whatnot appear as supposed to.

By the way ! The im.gif file dissapares after running the setup program, so if you try to run it again, the im.gif is gone and you will have to copy and chown/chmod another gif for it to work.

I am running Fedora 3, php 5 (latest as of current date), mysql 5 and apache 2 (latest as of current date), ImageMagic was installed using yum in the end due to issues that it could not read/manipulate jpg files (but that is an issue with that project).


Please fix this issue, I bet there are a _few_ pretty angry people out there because of this issue.

I will post the proper error message later tonight of you like.

Regards

K

[Nibbler]

That is not correct. Imagemagick is tested by converting the coppermine logo image to im.gif and then testing whether that operation was successful. This temporary image is then deleted. If the im.gif was provided in the package then that would defeat the entire purpose of the test.

[znapper]

Then you might have something else wrong in the application.
Imagemagic works just fine, pictures and thumbnails work fine, php and mysql works fine, in short coppermine works just fine, however I had to trick myself past the initial imagemagic test to get the thing up and running.

Following the copy procedure mentioned in the original post fixed the issue for me, I haven't checked the code to se why, the error message pointed to a missing im.gif. There was no error on calling convert from php or similar.

I can easily force the error when I get home from work and post the exact error message then (1-2 hours).

K

[znapper]

I stand corrected.

The error was indeed (from http error log):
convert: missing an image filename `albums/userpics/im.gif'.

And this was the error shown on the page (well almost anyway, error in line 33 something, missing albums/userpics/im.gif )

BUT !

This makes perfect sense, as the preceiding line in the log says:
convert: no decode delegate for this image format `images/coppermine_logo.png'.

Which is makes the test "fail" over all, even though the convert program works just fine with jpg's and gif's

- I still think this is not a very good implementation to test the convert program though, why?

- You are testing against a format which is hardly used.
- Not testing against .jpg and .gif can and will result in a coppermine installation with missing thumbs after installation (where did I see a thread about that on here)

A better sollution could maybe be to extended the setup screen with the option to tick boxes for gif, jpg, png and what formats have you, that you wanted your site to support and that the setup then actually tests for just those formats. This would be a better option and more safe, people would get a sensible message saying "ImageMagic does not support jpg, gif "etc. then, hopefully people would start bugging those people instead of you guys.

Default installation of ImageMagic on my distro does not support png (but supports gif and jpg) and the ImageMagic dists that i found and installed from the net didn't even support jpg's out of the box after installation.

Allthough the Coppermine project is a real treat, it depends on some pretty dodgy projects imo, the ImageMaker seemes like a project built by Debian nerds for other man reading loving debian nerds. People don't want to read man's and whitepapers, they just want the thing to work, and thus the ImageMaker project in a sense works against the Coppermine project in that respect.

Maybe you guys could create your own image manipulator, customized for Coppermine offcourse, or even better, bundle a tested and proven version of imagemaker or GD in the zip file.

Anyways, there you have it.

Regards

K

[Joachim Müller]

Maybe you guys could create your own image manipulator, customized for Coppermine offcourse, or even better, bundle a tested and proven version of imagemaker or GD in the zip file.

Definitely not: we're web app coders, not C++ junkies

In fact we do care little if a user has issues setting up ImageMagick correctly or not: we expect the pre-requisites to be met in the first place, which are IM or GD set up to process the file types that are supported by coppermine. Please note that we do not recommend self-hosting at all, so we consider the task to set up IM to be done by an experienced webserver admin.
However, an overhaul of the routines within coppermine that are performed if the image library is set up correctly is scheduled, as suggested in another thread today:

Imo we should not care too much about silly webserver setups (just because that's not our business). Instead, I'm planning to add a check into the installer and config that only will allow a user to change the image library if a check has been performed if the settings the user has chosen actually work.

If you want your suggestions to be taken seriously I suggest being more careful with your use of the word "bug", because we're not fond of Coppermine being acused to contain bugs that later turn out to be PEBKAC issues. Please respect the "one issue per thread" policy as well. Suggestions for features in future versions should be posted on the corresponding board.

[znapper]

No need to feel sore about reported or assumed weaknesses in your implemetation somewhere, it can only make it better in the end and everybody wins.

Topic changed to a more appropriate one, term "bug" was perhaps premature conserning the underlying cause.

I thank you for your reply, we slipped off subject while chatting, this was none intentional on my part (I was responding to the replies).

Keep it up

K