16 December 2009, 15:05

Hi,

I'm trying to complete my fist install of Mahara, and am currently stumped by the following error message:

Your server configuration does not include the pgsql extension. Mahara requires this in order to store data in a relational database. Please make sure that it is loaded in php.ini, or install it if it is not installed.

I'm on a VPS Linus Ubunto service, but am still learning (lots) about how to navitagate all the functions.  I'm using PLesk 9.??  

 Do I need to do a script line somehow, to install this extension?  Any suggestions for a newbie, of how I would go about doing that?

Tim

16 December 2009, 16:09

Hi Tim.

If you have super user access to the command line try..

sudo apt-get install php5-pgsql

You may have to follow this up with..

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

This second command will restart the apache service and will usually load the new module. 

16 December 2009, 16:18

Tim,

you need 2 package al least. One begins for: php5-pgsql-.... and other is libapache2-mod-auth-pgsql.
You should search and install the packages with: KPackageKit or Synaptic Package Manager.
Or even using apt-get install command. 

 Cheers

17 December 2009, 15:49

Thanks for the advice.  When I try to install from the ssh, by:

apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-pgsql

it returns that error : couldn't find package libapache2-mod-auth-pgsql

 Sorry for being such a newbie... but how do I acquire the package so that it can be installed?

18 December 2009, 7:18

In looking into this further... I am tring to install Mahara on an Ubuntu5.9 server with php5.2.4 and I gather from problems posted on other online boards, that this version of php5 does not include pgsql support, perhaps because of a previous security problem.  Does this make sense?

Below is an image of the exensions listed within my Plesk 9 Virtuozzo window.

18 December 2009, 8:22

There wasn't a Ubuntu 5.9 (5.04 or 5.10 both now unsupported).

If I were you I would check with the hosting company what you are actually running.

If it's Ubuntu you would like to run I would personally advise using 8.04 (Long Term Support/Enterprise Version).

The LTS releases have a longer development cycle than other releases which have a six month release and to be honest vary in quality and flakiness.

The significantly more stable versions are 6.06, 8.04 and the forthcoming 10.04.

If you can either establish that you already are running it or can have your Virtual Machine rebuilt as it then go for 8.04.

The LAPP Stack (Linux Apache PHP PostgreSQL) will happily support a fully functioning Mahara Implementation. 

18 December 2009, 11:26

Ah yes, thanks for clarifying.  It is actually 8.04 that is being run on the server.

 However, it seems the _php5-pgsql_ and _libapache2-mod-auth-pgsql_ extentions are not included in the installation for some reason.  Is it perhaps that the wrong php5 component (5.2.4-2ubuntu5.9) was installed versus a version that is more compatible with Ubunto 8.04? See above image that shows the version number, that is installed with the arch i386.  

Any additional advice on why these extensions would not be there?  Does the php5 version seem appropriate?

18 December 2009, 15:12

I have resolved the issue.  My webhost pointed out that I needed to do an apt-get update before trying to load the pgsql extention.  Geeeesh.

 Now I just need to find out what "user" corresponds to "the web server user" so that I can give it ownsership of the data root directory.  These are my choices:

Backup, Bin, Bind, Daemon, Dalfom, Dhcp, Fetchmail, Games, Gnats, Irc, Klog, Libuuid, List, Lp, Mail, Man, mhandlers-user, mysql, news, nobody, popuser, postgres, proxy, psaadm, psaftp, qmaild, qmaill, qmailp, qmailq, qmailr, qmails, root, smmsp, smmta, sshd, sw-cp-server, sync, sys, syslog, tomcat55, uucp, www-data

I'll try to figure this out... but if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad for some additional help.  Thanks for everything so far.

18 December 2009, 16:16

By default on Ubuntu Systems it's www-data

You could, create a new user so it wasn't so obvious to guess.

eg:

sudo /usr/sbin/useradd someuser -g somegroup -d /dev/null -s /sbin/nologin 

 Then..

sudo chmod 0755 /path/to/maharastuff

..and so on.

I'd recommend this book.

http://www.apachesecurity.net/ 

There's more to it than I've mentioned, a lot more, so it'd be good to do some reading.

You'll be looking after student data and you need to feel good about that.