10 July 2011, 19:08

Hi Henry,

It's indeed very frustrating when you try to get started with a new piece of software and it doesn't even install properly. That's certainly something we'd like to fix.

For that, we need help from the community. Mahara works fine and is very easy to install for us, so we're clearly not running into the same problems, probably due to our environment being different then yours.

The Mahara developers don't have the resources to test Mahara on every platform that users could try to install it on, so we rely on our user community to improve that process. A patch or a good bug report from a single user can often help us resolve an issue affecting a large number of Mahara users.

You are more than welcome to continue to share the error messages you run into with us.

Cheers,

Francois

11 July 2011, 5:59

Hi Francois,

I can appreciate what you are saying, and having been introduced to Moodle 1.8 then 1.9.x and now 2.1,  and MediaWiki, by a friend who is now very involved with Moodle, I can appreciate what you are saying. The problem is I cannot give you anything more than what is already there, I just do not know enough... I would love to be in the same position as my friend is with Moodle, if for no other reason than to just say to him "Well, would you believe, in Mahara, I did [whatever I did ]...." He writes some of the tech stuff in Moodle Docs  and I would like to be able to do the same for someone else, but where he can play with Moodle, I cannot install Mahara.:) It also appears that Mahara's community is still developing, whereas Moodle's seems huge.

The one redeeming feature I see is that Mahara is a Maori word for meeting or some such, it was developed in New Zealand, yet you are a Frenchman.Talk about strange bedfellows.. I see this in Moodle too, and I would like to be a part of that, but I can tell you, unless you get these kinds of bugs out and make the installer painless, or relatively so, you are going to be fighting a losing battle.

I am using Windows XP with service Pack 3, running Apache 2.2.19, MySQL 5.5.2(?) and PHP 5.3.6. Not familiar at all with PostGreSQL. I know a little SQL, some HTML and some Javascript, but no PHP - other than to do some strange hacks in Moodle that allow me to use TeX and reset the timeout for me to 24 hours not just 2 or 4. Outside of that, until I can get it working, I can't help anyone I am afraid... Unfortunately, I just can't get it out out of my head, Your Mahara's all I think about!!! .. some piece of software is just not going to defeat me.. so I will check back if I get it working.:) 

11 July 2011, 11:09

Hi Henry,

I'm sorry that you've had this experience with Mahara. It should be something that we can help you with.

In one of his previous messages, Francois suggested making sure that your database is clean -- it looks like you've already partially installed mahara, but not completed the process. Did you get the opportunity to recreate the database?

I personally find Mahara painless to install -- far more so than Moodle. As long as you have an up-to-date version of PHP (which is advisable for security in any case), it is usually pretty easy to install. Many of our community use a similar WAMP system as a base for installing Mahara and have relatively few issues.

Mahara does have a developing community, but the community is worldwide and very active never-the-less. I work for one of the UK mahara partners in Lancaster, UK and am one of the core developers/reviewers. We've been actively involved in Mahara for quite a while now and will be hosting next year's Mahara UK conference. Where are you geographically? It may be that there are user groups near by to you who can help.

If you're looking for some help while you're trying (rather than posting a question, and waiting some time for a response), you could try the mahara IRC channel. You should be able to use a web-based IRC client such as http://webchat.freenode.net/ to join the freenode IRC server and then join the #mahara channel. If you paste your question, there's usually someone around who may be able to help -- hang around for a while if you can because we don't always reply immediately, but once we see your message we try and help as best we can.

If you're looking to deploy Mahara, you could speak with one of the Mahara partners about hosting your Mahara. Several of us can also help with any custom developments you may require.

Andrew (LUNS)

11 July 2011, 19:47

Hi Andrew,

I am in Adelaide - Oz, and my situation is considerably more complex than I have let on here. Essentially, my employer is of the perception that if it is "free" it is going to cost more in the longer term. They are willing to spend millions on rubbish they do not need and overlook the real needs of their clientele - at one level. At another level, their view is that if they cannot control the servers, who has access to them and what goes on them, then they can be held liable for all sorts of damages when it all goes wrong. Paranoia, sure, but in this age of litigation, they are certainly being self defensive. At another level, they do want to provide a service, and there is a few, like me, who can see the benefits of a suite of products to meet a need rather than an expensive magic bullet approach. Moodle, Mahara and MediaWiki would meet all the needs of our clientele, and then some at a fraction of the cost of a commercial product.Infrastrucutre costs are the same but I am suggesting that ongoing support is actually cheaper, and constant updates keep the product current. We are not at the mercy of some commercial whim, basically. 

The trouble is that if the product is not easy to install, to begin with, then it could be ruled out and the credibility of all such products becomes questionable. This is a group of people who purchased a solution to one requiremnt and never got it running properly anyway, but they paid for it and persisted. Why this double standard exists, I don't know, but I suspect that open source does not have a strong marketing department to tell everyone how good the product is, and the person who was responsible for the failure of the product  has since moved on. I understand how good the product, Mahara, can be, but if I cannot get it working, the credibility of the product is ruined. That is my problem. I want it to work, want it to shine, but I can't.

The last time I tried to install, every table or doc that was created as listed as "Not installed." but the last two items

have nothing after them, just blanks. Is there an issue with the local email install? Or perhaps with a write permission?

12 July 2011, 19:25

Coming from another Mahara partner here...

The product IS easy to install, it's tested on a wide variety of OS with success..

If the credibility of the product is ruined because you were not able to install it, then I am worried about the group of people who assign credibility.

If the stakes are so high that the credibility is under scrutinency, would it not be worth, as Andrew suggested, recruiting a Mahara partner as a consultant and setting it up for you. (I know this is half of what this forum is doing, but we aren't able to properly diagnose all your issues!)

In terms of trying again, and sorry for repeating anything said above:

I made a video demonstrating installation of WAMP -> Then Mahara on WAMP -> and configuration of both inbetween and post installation.

Like all others trying to resolve your problems here we are sorry to hear you are really frustrated!!

Tom - [email protected]

13 July 2011, 0:29

Hi Tom, thanks for the videos, I have had a WAMP running for several years now, since I first met a thing called "PHP-Nuke" then the easier "Post-Nuke" around 1999, 2000 or 2001 from memory, so I do know a litle about installing and configuring a WAMP - but the Mahara installer video might help get me over the line. On a less savoury issue, please do not try to put words in my mouth. I am sorry if I did not make it clear but I am making points about what a few people in my work place will see and what they will say. What the general public says is their problem, not mine, I don't really care. I am only interested in my own little corner of the world. My little corner is based on the idea that if I am clearly out of step with the rest of the team, which I am, and cannot support my assertions that Open Source is a far more attractive option than proprietal software, which I am having difficulty with, then it is my credibility that suffers and by extension, all open source products The products will be discarded and will never be revisited - irrespective of any potential benefit. That is just the way it works, survival of the fittest, as offensive as that may be. As well, you obviously missed a point in my earlier posts, as stated, there is absolutely no way in which there going to be any possibility of any data being stored outside of my employer's own servers. By implication then, it would not be unreasonable to assume that it is extremely unlikely, read impossible, that anyone who is not an employee will ever get access to my employer's servers. This is a company that incurrs large traveling costs to make sure their ICT staff can do what they need to do so the argument is "Is this something we need to do?" - and right now, it is not looking good. As I am a simple old guy, who is perceived to be on a "slide to retirement", I am finding it increasingly difficult to influence policy anymore - so I need it to work. Just some more information about the general background to give you an idea of what I am trying to achieve. Sometimes I think I would love to climb Olympus Mons, it would certainly be easier..:) 

As a general rule of thumb, my own experience with Web Apps has actually been quite positive, and while there has always been issues installing any web app, I have never gotten to a point and simply cannot get past it. I have never seen a web app that presents a single message and even when error logs are turned on, still cannot present any specific issue that can be used to follow up to resolve an issue. You have all that is there and still it gets to the same point I started from.

Whatever I am doing I am repeating the same mistake, which is producing the same result, so can anyone offer something different? I don't know enough to make that kind of intuitive leap to make it work. For example, I have a list of things that says "Not installed".

13 July 2011, 6:28

Sorry, got called away earlier and now I have seen the videos, I have seen there are a couple of things that I did that were not included on the video, or that were done differently.

I have set up and configured PHP adequately, I have created the database, I have edited the config.php file as it should be, and all I get is Failed to upgrade!

The error logs has two lines in it:

[Wed Jul 13 20:31:02 2011] [error] [client 192.168.1.9] [INF] 1e (D:\\server\\htdocs\\mahara\\htdocs\\admin\\upgrade.php:54) Starting Mahara installation..., referer: http://192.168.1.9/mahara/htdocs/admin/
[Wed Jul 13 20:38:39 2011] [error] [client 192.168.1.9] [INF] 67 (D:\\server\\htdocs\\mahara\\htdocs\\admin\\upgrade.php:54) Starting Mahara installation..., referer: http://192.168.1.9/mahara/htdocs/admin/

The Access log btw says:

192.168.1.9 - - [13/Jul/2011:20:38:12 +0930] "GET /mahara/htdocs/ HTTP/1.1" 303 -
192.168.1.9 - - [13/Jul/2011:20:38:33 +0930] "GET /mahara/htdocs/admin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 6011
192.168.1.9 - - [13/Jul/2011:20:38:39 +0930] "POST /mahara/htdocs/admin/upgrade.php HTTP/1.1" 200 29635
192.168.1.9 - - [13/Jul/2011:20:38:40 +0930] "GET /mahara/htdocs/admin/upgrade.json.php?name=core&sesskey= HTTP/1.1" 500 -

Nothing odd in either of them I think...but I do not know enough here...

By the ip address, you will note that this is a local machine, on a small peer-to-peer network. The Apache sever is not installed on the C:\, for good reason. BTW, i have set up Elgg now, so I have Moodle, MediaWiki, WordPress, Elgg, and going to have a go at putting Xerte on... Am going to come back to this soon.  

EDIT: Btw... Tom, the videos may be useful to a much broader audience if you were to think about how they could be done better...They do contain some useful information, but it can be easily missed.

13 July 2011, 21:46

Hi Henry,

This line is a bit suspicious:

192.168.1.9 - - [13/Jul/2011:20:38:40 +0930] "GET /mahara/htdocs/admin/upgrade.json.php?name=core&sesskey= HTTP/1.1" 500 -

It should not be sending an empty sesskey.

Do you have cookies enabled in your browser?  If so, can you have a look and see if you've got a mahara session cookie from 192.168.1.9?

I guess the other thing you may want to do is make sure to set $cfg->wwwroot in your config.php, and make sure that when installing from your browser, you're accessing the site using the same wwwroot.

29 July 2011, 7:41

Well, after a month of playing around with this in every configuration I can conceive of, and watching everything, reading everything, I can say that Mahara intallation sucks big time. I cannot get past the exact smame error every time. I just cannot be bothered with it anymore and hopefully I can find something else that will do what I need it to do.  Thanks for the help and encouragement but I cannot spend any more time on it.