Total noob here just getting to grips with Linux, so if you could lay things out in layman's style for idiots who know nothing, I'd be grateful of that. I'm running the latest version of Manjaro.

I tried to install Xampp from the user repository but it wouldn't install so I downloaded the official .run file online, managed to get it going in terminal and it now says it's installed.

I then downloaded the Learning With Texts .zip file and unpackaged it.

The instructions for installing LWT on Linux can be found here: http://lwt.sourceforge.net/#installlnx

Everything seems to have worked up to Step 6:

"Step 6: Open a Terminal window, type and execute the following commands:
sudo mv /home/[your userid]/Downloads/lwt /var/www/html
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/lwt
sudo rm /var/www/html/index.html
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart"

There is no /var/www/html folder. In /var there are folders pertaining to apache2 but no www.

I'm wondering how I can go about getting this installed - it's just for simple foreign language learning.

Any help would be appreciated thanks.

You'd be better off working with Manjaro's official packages via the offical package manager rather than doing things by hand. That'll not only be easier but it will be what everyone expects so it will be easier to help you and you won't have to explain a lot of background each time. xampp is fine for legacy systems but puts things in weird places on modern systems as well as can add redundant versions causing conflict with existing packages.

I'm not a Manjaro user but it's based on Arch so it should be using pacman

That should put things, including Apache's document root, in familar places.

Hi and thanks for your response.

I ran the pacman codes and nothing has changed in terms of the file structure.

I have /var but there's nothing in it called www and I've also got /opt/lampp which contains a bunch of folders which appears to pertain to apache2 and mySQL.

I would rather have just installed the installer from the official repo but it didn't work. I've just tried installing from the official repo again and I'm not getting the error message now and it actually says it's creating /var/www/html and tells me to be patient 'this could take several minutes' but it's been like that for maybe half hour now.

I guess I will wait...

Well, I waited for over an hour and nothing is happening. I don't think this installer is going to work even.

Any advice is appreciated. As a newcomer to Linux from mac I'm a bit lost even though I'm managing to use the internet to complete things this apache thing has me stumped.

I would much rather just download the installer and do it that way.

I take it that the problem isn't so much XAMPP as the files are all there for it (in /opt/lampp) but that the Learning With Text instructions don't correspond to how the files and folders are laid out in an Arch-based system ? If so would I be better off asking on the LWT forums for their advice ?

As a side, how do I find out why the installer from the repo isn't working for me, and if it is a problem with it/the repo how can I let the people who manage it know ?

Thanks /sorry for total noobness this is all new to me.

Maybe...
manjaro is not Ubuntu so the posted instructions for LWT are not valid.

The default document root with Apache via pacman is /srv/http while xampp defaults to /opt/lampp/htdocs as you have discovered. So now you probably have two versions of Apache installed. You can change the instructions to match xampp and in addition you will also need to manually configure it to start as a service.

The benefit of installing stuff using the package manager / repositories is that everything is already configured for the distribution and should just work.

https://forum.manjaro.org/t/install-...lamp-2016/1243

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XAMPP

1 members found this post helpful.

We've all "been there, done that" and Failure is Feedback. And a key element to "knowing".
Have a look at Clone Your Website with XAMMP for
XAMMP answers/clues/resources to further research, as well as the links michaelk gave you.

I hope that helps you.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the links I will do my best to work through them.

FWIW the srv/http/ directory has nothing in it so i think i only still have one version installed.

Thanks for the tips I'll give it a go.

I've stopped and uninstalled lampp using and will now follow the instructions on Arch's XAMPP page. I'll let you all know if it works.

So this morning I've been tinkering.

I followed the instructions on https://forum.manjaro.org/t/install-...lamp-2016/1243 to a tee and everything worked up to "Test phpMyAdmin
Open your browser and navigate to http://IP-Address/phpmyadmin."

Instead of http://localhost/phpmyadmin bringing up the sample page I'm getting phpMyAdmin - Error "The mysqli extension is missing. Please check your PHP configuration."

It says to check their docs for more information but it's very confusing to me.

I googled and was told to check if Apache is running using /opt/lampp/lampp start.

I get I'm not sure how to proceed.

You can not have two servers running on the same port which is why xampp fails to start Apache. Pick which one you want to use. You can change the default port on one if want to play with both at the same time.

If you uncommented extension=mysqli.so per the posted guide did you restart Apache? If you created the phpinfo test page it should show if mysqli is loading.

Ok - note to self - always follow the instructoins on one machine instead of having two laptops running side by side and using one for reference and one for copy/pasting; I had mistakenly not uncommented the php file and now I've done it I've got the test screen which I should have.

I don't know what you mean by 'You can not have two servers running on the same port which is why xampp fails to start Apache. Pick which one you want to use. You can change the default port on one if want to play with both at the same time.' I thought xampp was just running the servers, and so should be running Apache ? I'm really very new to all this sorry some of the jargon confuses me.

Alas all my test screens are working now but I don't know how to get my LWT files onto the server so I can access them in my web browser. The guys over at LWT don't seem to be able to help.

The noun "server" can refer to the hardware, or the operating system, or (in this case) to the individual process running and listening for WWW incoming activity to respond to. See also the term "daemon".

When you install via the package manager, not only are updates managed easily the server (in the last meaning there) starts up automatically when the operating system starts up. So Apache2 is using port 80 and maybe also port 443 to listen for incoming connections. That means other programs cannot also listen on port 80 at the same time and so if you try to start up Apache2 from Xampppppp it will find port 80 already reserved and thus fail to start and result in the error message you see. The solution is to choose either Xamppp and its non-standard way of doing things or else Manjaro's normal packages. Can't have both, so I recommend the latter for nearly all use-cases and would, if asked, recommend uninstalling Xampp. However, the choice is yours and there are people around that will help with Xamp

Oh right I see - I've installed the xampp .run file which is conflicting with the package manager install I've been trying to do ?

It looks that way. If you uninstall Xampppp then it'll be easier for you to work with and there are more people that can / will help. If you uninstall the corresponding normal packages then that would also solve that particular problem. It's an either-or choice.

Either way, you can see all the processes on your machine using ps

There are a lot of variations to what is displayed and how it is arranged. But the point there is to identify Apache. Or else use the following if you have the regular package:

Daemons are often named for the main protocol they use followed by a 'd' for 'daemon'. So you should see "httpd" there in the output for ps or systemctl

Ok well I've uninstalled everything and reinstalled according to https://forum.manjaro.org/t/install-...lamp-2016/1243 and everything appears to be working as normal - the httpd status is active, my test pages all work and I'm able to log in to myphpadmin.

Now my only problem is to get Learning With Texts running on the server so I can access it from localhost/lwt in my web browser and then start using it.

Thank you very much for your patience in helping me here. It's taken me a few days but I'm now starting to become familiar with it. I understand if it's annoying having to explain uncomplicated things to me but I do appreciate the help

If this occurred directly after installation of the "LAMP Stack", it could be the install process started it.

You can determine what is "on" port 80 using
and the process that is running on port 80 should be listed in the left-most column.

Hope this helps future diagnoses.
But it sounds like you have it working.