Plesk / PHP issues / Application Vault

[freaky@]

Hey there,

we're new to Plesk, so it might just be us, but we're having several annoying problems with plesk.

For starters, it looks like the application vault is ****. We tried 2 programs, Mambo and Typo3 both of which have _serious_ issues. Typo3 hardly runs, it gives a lot of errors, has quite some directories with incorrect permissions and can't execute the ImageMagick stuff thx to safe_mode. Next to that settings like the DPI aren't set, which aren't quite things you can leave up to the end user.

The Mambo is even worse. The frontpage doesn't do anything at all (there are errors logged) and the administrator interface misses the most important thing, being the menu.

Installing Mambo manually also reveals some problems (this is after turning safe mode off). Mambo isn't allowed to load some includes (might be a mambo problem tho') due to the open_basedir restriction. The strange thing is... the includes are in a path that should be allowed by open_basedir, only the file (atleast in the error message, couldn't find it in the actual php file) is prefixed by a / which would have it look for the file in the root. It isn't there ofcourse... but it does get loaded if we unset open_basedir.

Anyone else experiencing these issues?

Oh btw, in case anyone might know we have very very strange issues with PHP5 on a Fedora Core 4 server (smp kernel). The CLI runs like a charm (using the same config files as the apache module (/etc/php.ini and everything in /etc/php.d got this from phpinfo()). However the module doesn't seem to care about it's config at all. It doesn't load the modules (which come from config files in /etc/php.d so we don't have mysql support for example) and doesn't load the config file /etc/php.ini either, albeit it says it does. One of the things that makes this obviously clear is the memory limit. According to phpinfo() on the apache module it's 8MB, but the config says 32M and the CLI's phpinfo() agrees on that. No clue on where to search on this one, and it doesn't log any errors to provide them either... Anyone got some suggestions?

Btw we didn't use the server with PHP issues for testing plesk ofcourse. It is a server with plesk tho' which makes reinstalling PHP kinda hard as it wants to remove plesk to reinstall PHP :/

 

[nickcmp]

I always have problems with app vault especially as I have php 5 and fedora and the strange thing is, Mambo is no where to be found in my app vault

 

[tnats@]

Yes, I've experienced this. I'm looking through these forums and knowledgebase. Gallery, osCommerce, others all have problems with permissions. I'm just getting started in the hosting business and I'm afraid of letting regular customers handle this. I'm going to get support calls all the time.

Does everyone just offer these to their customers and support it? Or, are people just turning them off?

Thanks,
Tom

 

[jwdick]

A lot of people do not offer the application vault. Customers who install from the app vault are not likely to keep the software up to date which then becomes YOUR liability from a hosting and security standpoint. Any user who would update software would also know how to install the software without using the application vault. The only benefit that I see is it makes it easy for novices to install ( when the install even works which most of the time it doesn't with Plesk 8 ). But the downside the is the extra security risk and the support issues. Not worth in my opinion.

 

[tnats@]

Makes sense Jack, thanks for the information.

I have a couple of questions about your experience in hosting. Mind if I contact you off line?

Thanks.

 

[jwdick]

Sure, you can send me a pm