Coppermine 1.4x with SYMLINKs at Dreamhost and PHP 5

[profotograf]

Hi,

I have a problem which I have been trying to solve, and now its come to a serious impass, since my hosting server Dreamhost has eliminated the ability to setup a site using PHP4x.  The problem is this:

• I setup CPG 1.4.x in a server space on my Dreamhost server.
• I install the software with no problems.
• Dreamhost uses a symlink rotation of home directories with a hidden .textname in the path.
• My previous hoster did not do this, so this issue never happened.
• Coppermine uses the directory(__FILE__) thing to read the root directory.
• In PHP4 this function reads the directory without the symlink.
• In PHP5 it reads the symlink as being a real directory, however this causes Coppermine to crash as the directory with symlink will not read.
• I cannot remove the symlink situation in any shape or form that I know of, with .htaccess or other thing.
• Dreamhost Support tells me its my problem.
• I tried to install CPG 1.4.x in a blank domain with PHP5 running, and same problem, integrated with my JOOMLA 1.0.15 setup, or not.

So recently Dreamhost decided to ELIMINATE the ability to turn my site from a PHP5 to a PHP4 running space, which allowed me to do other stuff where I was forced to use PHP5, by swapping in and out.  As of today, once I swap my PHP4 to PHP5, the option to turn it back, is 100% gone.  And all new setup automatically use PHP5.  SOOOOOOO I cannot use Coppermine in this situation.

I have searched every possible keyword here and cannot find anyone else having these issues.  So what am I doing wrong here.

This is the message I get whenever I try to run CPG:

Code Select Expand

Notice: Undefined offset: 4096 in /home/.garbled/profotograf/poseraddicts.com/cpg/include/debugger.inc.php on line 112
Fatal error :

The path it really needs is:

Code Select Expand

/home/profotograf/poseraddicts.com/cpg/

Or am I barking up the wrong tree and is the problem elsewhere???

Can anyone help me???

Greetings,
Antonio Rodriguez
ProFotograf

[Joachim Müller]

From http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.constants.predefined.php:

__FILE__
The full path and filename of the file. If used inside an include, the name of the included file is returned. Since PHP 4.0.2, __FILE__ always contains an absolute path with symlinks resolved whereas in older versions it contained relative path under some circumstances.

Judging from that section of the PHP docs, this feature has not changed since PHP4.0.2.
The comments on the page http://de3.php.net/manual/en/language.constants.php propose some workarounds.
I must confess that I have not looked into this in detail. Not sure though why your webhost performs this "rotation".

[profotograf]

From http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.constants.predefined.php:Judging from that section of the PHP docs, this feature has not changed since PHP4.0.2.
The comments on the page http://de3.php.net/manual/en/language.constants.php propose some workarounds.
I must confess that I have not looked into this in detail. Not sure though why your webhost performs this "rotation".

Well Joachim,

I only have this issue with Coppermine 1.4.x and with the hoster running PHP 5.  When I switched the site base PHP back to PHP 4.x, Coppermine ran again, without any trouble whatsoever.  The only oddness is the appearance of the ".garbled" in my path.  And if I try to run anything talking to the "/home/.garbled/profotograf/sitename.com/" it gives me a path not valid or file not found message depending on my operations.  However this path is given to me by the built in functionality.  Why they do the rotation is a mystery to me, and they won't tell me why.

I only need to make Coppermine work again, no matter what I need to do.  If I have to hard-code the stupid path into the files then I will do it, but that defeats the purpose of Open Source.  And I cannot understand why NO one else has this issue, or do they just give up on Dreamhost servers and go get another Gallery software?  That seems to me to be what people are doing looking at the incomplete threads on here by Dreamhost users... Look up "Dreamhost" in the search and you'll see many who cannot get it to work with this issue and the symlinks. 

I'm so sad that my Coppermine is dead on 3 of my sites, and I will be losing so many artists who posted there if I cannot find a solution.

I appreciate every bit of help anyone can give me.

Greetings,
Antonio
(ProFotograf)

[Joachim Müller]

If I have to hard-code the stupid path into the files then I will do it

That's an option that can easily be performed with a tool like Emurasoft's ReplaceInFiles.

but that defeats the purpose of Open Source

Really? Why do you think that your editing of coppermine because of exotic server setups defeats the purpose of open source software?

[profotograf]

 :'(

ich will einfach tot sein.  Meine Gallerien sind alle TOT, sind mit Brueckung uber Joomla zu erreichen und ich komme nicht auf die problemloesung.

die Tech Support leute bei Dreamhost sagen es ist mein Problem und helfen mir nicht wegen diesen Symlink ding was anscheinend nicht auf anderen Hosting-servern verwendet wird.  Seltsam.

Ich installiere ein blanko version von Coppermine in ein subdomain und sehe ob es ueberhaupt laeuft.  Oder ob demselben fehler tritt auf.

HEUL.... Habe 8 Stunden gearbeitet auf diesen Problem ohne jegliche erfolg...

A.

[Abbas Ali]

I am also on Dreamhost - but the issue you are raising never ever happened with me nor anyone else i know of (on Dreamhost). I highly doubt that the notice you are getting is because of .textname. It must be because of something else. Give me a direct link to the page where you are getting that notice.

Also turn on the debug mode and if you cannot access the config page then see this.