02-Sep-2009

A first success
One hour and a half it took, to find out why MySql didn’t work as expected.
I started with re-creating a base database since I couldn’t login anymore, and started the server. First things first: tried to access the database without password change: from the commandline, it was not a problem, but PHPMyAMIn didn’t like it – I needed to add a password.
From the commandline I tested if Diana could be reached, and that was no problem. Nor was starting a telnet session to the mySQL port: It got there – so the problem was not in the connectivity between the emulator and the real machine. Connecting to the Mysql on Diana however revealed a reason: No access for root@hera.intra.grootersnet.nl (the name comes form the DNS server – it needs to be cleaned…).
This is strange, since there is a line stating that root has access from any host. But the passwords don’t match, so access is dienied. So I added the line for this host, user ‘root’, in the Diana database, and added a password on access on the laptop database. Now, I could connect to the database on Diana, and back. I also find why i couldn’t access the database: the password needs to be specified on the commandline, as specified by the configuration…(by accident – it was in front of me in the mySQL-on-VMS-installation documentation all the time).
PHPMYAdmin now didn’t complain the server didn’t respond anumore, but next ran into a few problems causing a crash of the engine; probably because things were changed and the (persistent) server wasn’t restarted. So I stopped the PHPWASD process and restarted.
This worked fine, but an error I hade before appeared again – to be expected since I didn’t chnage the environment yes: the system ran out of pagefile space. So I added a second pagefile, doubleling the pagefilespace. That helped – I got something else to handle : I ran into a memory-size limit preventing an allocation to take place. This sounded familiar: there is a parameter in PHP.INI that limits the amount of memory than can be allocated by the PHP process. On Diana, this has been set to 12M – 1.5 times the normal value of 8M – being the default for PHP3. Since PHP 4 ( and 5 ) have a way higher maximum, it’s wise to limit it. I did so on Diana, and the PHP.INI file that comes with PHPWASD, puts on a constarint of 8M.
Updated that to 12M, stopped the process and restarted PHPMYADMIN, behold, it works:
There are still a few things left to handle in the PHPMyAdmin configuration but these are of lower priority, unless I need them.
Next to test is WordPress. I’ll start with the current setting: WP2.6.3 and one of the lesser blogs on Diana will be copied to the emulator and set up to read the data from Diana, so I don’t have to load the database on the emulator; If that works, the PHP installation on Diana will be updated.
Mark berryman has issued an update with some enhancements: some bits and pieces that are missing in HP’s version, and that one will be past of the test.