Monday, November 23, 2009

Getting Error 404

I took most of the weekend off from the trying to make the development environment work problem. To be honest, nothing was going to happen by the time I got home Friday night. I ignored it on Saturday. Sunday I had company and got to see Star Trek rebooted. Now I can finally catch up on my GWC podcasts.

So Sunday night and Monday morning, I finally had a clear enough head to go back to the problem. So I Googled on "getting 404 error on my local Drupal site" and found Learn By the Drop. His answer to the first comment was to check the .htaccess file.

None of my downloaded files have that one. I think the FTP program hid it. So I went through through CPanel to find it and downloaded for Circulation Desk, FFGarret, and Alt. BM Site.

Cleaned out the cache, refreshed the local copy of Circulation Desk, tried logging in, and it still didn't work. *headdesk* Damn I was so hoping that would do it! It made sense because it is a file you get with a clean install and a file computers tend to hide for user's good.

Back to the Google links. Apparently something goes wonky with clean URLs. Found a Drupal forum post on details to make sure are in the Apache code for those to work. The issue they're talking about is turning on the Clean URLs and I can't even get to the admin pages. :p Okay, down in the comments, other people describe what I have, so I changed it. *Crosses fingers* Turning Apache on and off. Great it turned back on. That always worries me because it takes forever. Back to the browser that i think has gotten tired and doesn't want to play any more. :p End program on Firefox. So tired of it doing that. Okay, got Firefox back up and try logging in the local copy of Circulation Desk.

New error - 500 - I haven't made the changes to the virtual host file yet. Made changes. Got paranoid that Apache wasn't going to come back on again. It did. Back to Firefox. Clean cache. Refreshed local copy of Circulation Desk. Try logging in. 500 Internal Server Error.

One last trick from this thread is to check the .htaccess file to see if a wrong option has been selected. Whelp, that is there but I think it is commented out. Make no changes to this file.

Another possibility is the symbolic links problem that is the first handbook page under "Multiple Drupal Sites Under Windows." Downloaded the Junction.zip fiel, which is the program that builds symbolic links for Windows. But that page also talks about using one codebase for multiple sites. *Sigh*

Figure I would find the fresh version of Drupal and follow the instructions from "Running multiple sites on a local PC from a single codebase" tells me before trying to fool with Junction program tomorrow. I can just comment off the coding I know works in the virtual host file without losing anything. I have no idea why this step has me so damn leery of doing it. I think I'm afraid I'm going to end up having the wrong things on the wrong site, probably starting with the themes.

Short version of this morning: I'm bumbled my way through the instructions, got to the Drupal installer page, figured out how to make sure the folders storing all my files is read-write enabled, ran the update script twice, before I finally got logged in and REACHED the administrations pages. God-awful ugly administration pages with my theme no where in sight and a mile-long pink box listing all the errors my database was throwing. I had to leave for work by that point so I just rebooted the computer to give it a nice rest.

It was 2pm before I hit myself upside the head. Of course all the tables for the different modules were throwing so many damn errors, the modules ARE NOT WHERE THEY NEED TO BE IN ORDER TO RUN NOW!

At this point, I'm looking forward to throwing out all the incomplete instructional printouts I have amassed once I have typed up step-by-step instructions of what I need to do for FFGarret and Alt. BM Site's local copies to work right. :p

Read Free!
The BookWorm

4 comments:

ryivhnn said...

Donno if you found the quote on your travels but one of the long time drupallers has mentioned that most people develop on linux/mac and Windows users are like some kind of stepchild, so the Windows docs are sketchy at best and non-existant at worst :)

Making sure modules are all where they should be is a good idea, they should automatically pick up though. Also with D6 you may need Performance - Clear cache.

I've tweaked OSX to show all hidden and system files, now I can see everything due to having similar issues. Looks strangely linux, just prettier ;) You'd think there would be a similar tweak for Windows (mine was a single solitary command line toggle). Otherwise any decent ftp client should have a show hidden files setting.

My current thing is waiting for rollover so I can download the bloody /files directory without Cyberduck timing out >_< It said one more day yesterday dammit (so will probably roll over later today).

Good luck :)

KLCtheBookWorm said...

Yeah, it ended up that was part of the issue where the modules are.

*Sigh* On the production sites since they are in two separate accounts and then two separate subdomains, I'm just running three separate installs of Drupal. And I can't say where I picked up the "install all modules in the main modules folder" but that's where I have put them ALL on each one. Especially with Drupal 6, that's no longer kosher and they want you to put it under the sites folder. :p (Which I did manage to do correctly for the new themes made with Zen, go figure.)

So all Drupal could find thanks to the way the scripts wrote the database was the core module files, since I was being good and following the directions and sent my downloaded modules to sites/circulationdesk/modules/ instead. And never showing up on the module admin page.

I found the fix to it though. Move the files back to the main, then uninstall them in Drupal, and then reinstall them where they really should go. Then I have to do the same thing for the local copies of FFGarret and Alt BM Site.

I haven't figured out if I want to give myself the headache of fixing it on each of the production sites yet. I probably should to make them consistent with the way the Drupal community wants things done.

Donno if you found the quote on your travels but one of the long time drupallers has mentioned that most people develop on linux/mac and Windows users are like some kind of stepchild, so the Windows docs are sketchy at best and non-existant at worst :)

That really does explain why the best tutorials I have found are from people running their own Drupal tutorials and not actually in the handbook. :p I'm sure 99% of all Drupal users are very nice people, but the loudest damn voices on the 'Net are the damn trolls who have everything figured out and hate when you go explaining it to the new people. I'll search for my answers but I've given up asking for help on the forums.

What's irritating is I have enough professional writing schooling to really help the handbook and they are always begging for help in that department. But my writing is--in theory--something I need to get paid for. And I don't want to deal with one sneering asshole who has a hate on for Bill Gates, newbies, or whatever the issue may be. I will be writing out better step by step instructions for me, but what I'm going to do with them I haven't figured out yet.

ryivhnn said...

Ignore the trolls, I do ;) People who contribute useful stuff have greater community currency than trolls anyhow so if anyone did give you a hard time they'd probably get shot own.

I like the site specific stuff all being separate from core stuff, means all I need to do s back up /sites and /files and the db if I'm messing around :)

KLCtheBookWorm said...

Have to get the stuff written first.