CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I managed to install CiviCRM on my Mac and on a Linux server, but I have problems with installing CiviCRM 4.2.6 on a site on a server of the German provider Strato, whose support staff seems to be clueless. At least they told me where to find the error log.

I get to the installation page /sites/all/modules/civicrm/install/index.php where I enter the correct database credentials:

CiviCRM Database Settings

MySQL server: rdbms.strato.de
MySQL username: U*******
MySQL password: *******
MySQL database: DB*******

Drupal Database Settings

MySQL server: rdbms.strato.de
MySQL username: U*******
MySQL password: *******
MySQL database: DB*******

After 2 minutes I get this error page — no matter if I click “Re-check requirements” or “Check and install CiviCRM”l ( and that’s actually strange that checking requirement takes so long, 2 min):

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, service@webmailer.de and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

In the error log I’ve found:

04.11.2012 01:32:30 ***.org [client 95.113.*.*] Premature end of script headers: index.php, referer: http://***.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/install/index.php

  Does anybody have a clue what’s the problem and how I can solve it. Installing Drupal 7.16 didn’t cause any problems, and I copied and pasted the MySQL data from the Drupal settings file.

It is with good reason that the About CiviCRM page says, regarding hosting:

Quote

We encourage users to consider Virtual Private Servers (VPS) OR (semi) dedicated hosting OR shared hosting from a host with experience hosting CiviCRM.

Okay, somehow you’re right. In my case maybe CiviCRM is overkill anyway, I’d like to use it mainly for a customer who wants to have a list of events and application forms for courses. On the other hand I know CiviCRM already quite well, so for me this would be the easiest and most comfortable solution if it worked. And it did already work on my Mac, which is not the most dedicated server platform.

It's not a simple package to host.

Right, but connecting to the database is a basic task, and that is somehow the problem here. In this case it’s a remote MySQL connection, not localhost. It works with Drupal. And on another server I managed to establish a mysql connection to my Macbook with DynDNS.

Since the error page appears after 2 min, I assume it must be some kind of timeout problem. I tried also to fill in only the CiviCRM credentials and leave the Drupal credentials empty and then vice versa. In the first case I get:

CiviCRM Database Details
Does the server exist   Can't find the a MySQL server on 'rdbms.strato.de': Can't connect to MySQL server on 'rdbms.webmailer.de' (4)
Are the access credentials correct   OK
MySQL version at least 5.1   OK (MySQL 5.5.27-log)
Is auto_increment_increment set to 1   OK
Can I access/create the database   OK (Database 'DB1166514' exists)
Can I access/create InnoDB tables in the database   OK
Can I create temporary tables in the database   OK
Can I create lock tables in the database   OK

Drupal Database Details
Does the server exist   OK ()
Are the access credentials correct   That username/password doesn't work:
Can I access/create the database   The database: '' does not exist

…and in the second case:

CiviCRM Database Details
Does the server exist   Can't find the a MySQL server on '': Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)
Are the access credentials correct   That username/password doesn't work: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)
Can I access/create the database   I can't create new databases and the database '' doesn't exist (user '' doesn't have CREATE DATABASE permissions.)
Can I access/create InnoDB tables in the database   Unable to create InnoDB tables. MySQL InnoDB support is required for CiviCRM but is either not available or not enabled in this MySQL database server. Could not determine if mysql has innodb support. Assuming no
Can I create temporary tables in the database   Could not login to the database.
Can I create lock tables in the database   Could not login to the database.
Drupal Database Details
Does the server exist   Can't find the a MySQL server on 'rdbms.strato.de': Can't connect to MySQL server on 'rdbms.webmailer.de' (4)
Are the access credentials correct   OK
MySQL version at least 5.1   OK (MySQL 5.5.27-log)
Is auto_increment_increment set to 1   OK
Can I access/create the database   OK (Database 'DB1166514' exists)

So the credentials are correct and the checks are passed, but the server “doesn’t exist”.

Based on what you posted, no, it's actually almost impossible to know what the problem is. The error message is generic and thus vague. Can you ask your host to turn on more complete error reporting?

Okay, I’ll do that.  The answer to my last question to them was to ask the software vendor for these error messages…

Thanks, but remote connection means it’s a TCP connection on port 3306 (standard for mysql), so that doesn’t have anything to do with sockets. socket connections only work on localhost (and if you tell mysql to connect to localhost, 127.0.0.1 means TCP connection to localhost).

I asked the provider for a more detailed error log, but that’s not available. Anyway, I don’t know if Apache can provide more verbose logging at all.

The Drupal settings contain 'driver' => 'mysql', so that seems to be mysql and not mysqli. How can I see the difference, and does it matter at all?