h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If that's not a controversial journal entry on a website full of geeks I don't know what is, but I'm not trying to be controversial, and certainly not trying to start an arguement.

After having to rebuild my server yesterday, I decided that I'd put Apache on it as the webserver, rather than using IIS6 which comes as part of Windows 2003 Server. There have been things that I've been wanting to build into sites recently that you can only do with Apache, and although the finished sites are hosted on Linux/Apache servers, I've been developing on Windows/IIS machines.

So where did it all go wrong?

Well, first of nowhere seemed to say "You can get Apache2 for Windows", at least not where I was looking. So I installed the 1.3.something version. That seemed to work fine though, I even managed to configure it and get it dishing up basic webpages. So I installed PHP, and that seemed to go straight in, but the automatic installer then said "We haven't written the software to automatically configure Apache." Ah.
So, a quick google on how to do that, and php.net gave me some lines to add to the config file, and it was serving up php pages. Woo Hoo, this doesn't seem too hard.
Downloaded MySQL (see I am an open source fan) and installed that. Configured it, got it working from the command line, told php to use it's extension library, it didn't work.

Argh!

Now this is where the problem with Apache lies, I couldn't figure out what was going wrong, so in my methodical way, I split things down and tested them one at a time. A problem that arises with PHP installations quite often is that it can't find the extension libraries, but if that's the case, it normally dies and tells you it can't find it, which it wasn't doing. So it must have been finding the libraries, but I tried altering the php config file to look for a library that wasn't installed. Still no error. But that should have thrown up an error! No I'm googling frantically and finding lots of seemingly helpful advice, none of which worked. I read (not skimmed) pages and pages of forums and installation intructions looking for a possible answer to why it wasn't working, I knew it wasn't reading the php.ini (the config file) but I had no idea why. All of the forums/installation stuff went on about these problems being because of the path to the php.ini file either having backslashes instead of forward slashes, or apache not having the right read privalages on the php.ini file. No help. When Apache2 (I'd uninstalled 1.3.whatever by now and tried installing 2 to no effect) installs, it runs as the user of the machine, mostly administrator, so privalages were not a problem, and it could see the file, the phpinfo() file which shows you all the settings was saying it was looking for it in the right place.

Once half my scalp had gone I decided on a nice cup of tea to calm myself, and was telling the missus about the problem, which had now been going on from around lunchtime to about 8pm, and she replied "What do the logs say? Would they tell you anything?"

ARGH!!!

The logs, Apache's logs!!! It said in there occasionally that it couldn't find the libraries!!! It was loading in the php.ini file fine, but rather than dying when it couldn't find the libraries, it wrote the errors to the logs and carried on.

This is the problem with Apache (that I've found so far) the majority of users of it know stuff like this, and assume that everyone else does too! WE DON'T!!! Windows IIS doesn't do that! Don't assume we'd know that Apache does! If you want people to leave Windows and start using things like Linux and Apache, you're going to have to give us hints and help! A single line in any of these intallation guides or a post in any of the forums saying "Don't forget, Apache writes all it's errors to the logs, and not necessarily to the screen, check them if you're having problems." would be all it took. Is that hard? No! Get off you blooming geek high horse and help people for a change!

Not all Apache users, or even all geeks (I freely admit I'm a geek) are like that, but all the ones who write the so called installation guides, or all the ones who actually post to the help forums seem to be.

So, I've got my server back and am currently pulling websites and databases off the old hard drive which I've resurrected (can mount it, but not boot from it) onto the new one. Long day ahead before I actually get to code again.

Job hunting wise, I actually got around to signing on yesterday. The job centre up here shout be renamed "Chav House" not a nice place. Average age, 20, average kids per chav, 2. Oh for an automatic shotgun and the law turning a blind eye for twenty minutes.

I'm so glad I don't have to w*rk with computers..

YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRIGHT PASTEY LETS COMPLANE ABOUT THIS