PHP not working properly with redhat 9

tolindsey · 07-22-2003, 10:16 AM

Help!

I'm another total newbie...

I've just installed Redhat 9 and have installed php. When I type:
rpm -qa | grep php

I get:

php-imap
php-idap
php
php-mysql

I have started and stopped httpd

I can view our simple php page just fine, but when I try to run it, nothing happens except that it says "connecting to..." for a moment and then disappears. It runs fine on another linux server with php. It does not actually connect to a database.

An example of the script is at: ww.buttersky.com/magic_eight.php (the script works fine in this location).

any ideas?

Thanks

david_ross · 07-22-2003, 12:38 PM

You said it is connecting to a database - is the database backend up?

tolindsey · 07-22-2003, 12:59 PM

this particular php script page does not actually connect to a database. Everything is self-contained within the html page, so it shouldn't actually be trying to connect to anything,

I assume that if php is installed properly, it should work?

here is the script:<html>
<head>
<title>phpMagic8</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
</head>

<body>
Ask the magic 8-ball a question!
<br>
<form method="post" action='<? echo $PHP_SELF; ?>'>
<input type="text" name="question" value="<? echo $question; ?>">
<br>
<input type="submit" value="Tell me, o wise one"></form><br>

<?
if (isset($question)) {
$answers = array( "Yes",
"No",
"Of Course",
"Never",
"Maybe",
"Theres a Chance",
"What do you think I am, psychic?",
"Sometimes",
"If you're lucky");
srand((double) microtime() * 1000000);
$count = count($answers);
echo "The wise 8-ball says... " . $answers[rand(0,$count)];
}
?>

</body>
</html>

tolindsey · 07-23-2003, 11:11 AM

I have the answer.. in case anybody out there has a similar problem. It wasn't related to the linux install at all - here is the answer I received:

This script was apparently written for an older version of PHP or a 4.2 or later version that had register_globals enabled in php.ini. The default in 4.2 an later has register_globals off as a security measure and that means that request variables from forms are passwd in an associative array. So in your code you test to see if $question is set to indicate that the page has been called from the form and that variable will never be defined as you haven't extracted it from the $_POST associative array. I'm not where I have an Apache/PHP to test with at the moment but if you change:

if (isset($question)) {

to read:

if (isset($_POST['question'])) {

I think it will work on RH 9. You can read more about this behaviour of PHP at http://www.php.net/manual/en/securit...terglobals.php