phpvirtualbox not starting after upgrade to salckware64-14.0

nass · 04-20-2013, 09:40 AM

Hello everyone,
I finally found sometime to upgrade slackware64 to v14.0 and I can not get phpvirtualbox to present the login screen.

I had to re-enable php support in httpd.conf & to recompile the vbox kernel modules.

However, phpvirtualbox fails to start properly. Also I don't think there is a phpvirtualbox logfile to keep an idea of what might be wrong. or is there?

Has anyone else been through this?

astrogeek · 04-21-2013, 03:36 AM

I am completely unfamiliar with phpvirtualbox - did not know there was such a thing - but as no one else has answered I'll take a few guesses.

You said it will not present a login screen, do you get anything back from the http request?

You said you had to re-enable php in httpd.conf - if you are using a virtualhost to reach the phpvirtualbox host you may also find that you need to reconfigure vhosts in httpd.conf and the extras/httpd-vhosts.conf file.

From what I can tell from a quick look, it is all just an ajaxed web interface, so you might set up a very simple non-php target page at the location just to see that the path is reachable, then troubleshoot the php end afterwards.

So the starting point - is the target host reachable?
If so, add a php echo to the target - is php alive?
Then begin to look at phpvirtualbox itself...

Hope this is some help.

nass · 04-21-2013, 08:56 AM

hi astrogeek. thank you for the information.
I know very little about html, and the apache webserver and absolutely nothing concerning php.
I haven't really tampered with it anymore than is absolutely necessary in order to setup virtualbox, webmin & mrtg (for squid monitoring).

the /var/log/httpd/access.log doesn't say anything when I go to the address.
I copied a simple html file in the phpvirtualbox folder and it is shown fine.
access.log says:

Quote:

<ip address of webserver> - - [21/Apr/2013:16:33:03 +0300] "GET /phpvirtualbox/mrtg-index.html HTTP/1.1" 200 2809

I also found a small php echo file from http://php.net/manual/en/tutorial.firstpage.php and it shows up properly from within the php folder.

There exist some updates though. The server is headless and only today I fixed nx connection to the server so I logged in to the server and started a firefox session on the server. So I connected to "localhost" (unlike before where i was sitting on a client pc). Well from localhost I can connect properly.
Additionally, if from the same firefox session I replace localhost with the server's hostname (also available to my intranet through DNS), trying to get the login screen will again fial, but this time I'll get an informative msg:

Quote:

PHP is not being parsed by your web server. Make sure that PHP is installed.
Unable to continue.Note: you may also see this message if you have opened index.html in your web browser directly rather than accessing it through your web server.

I guess this gives something to work on for a while. I'll check the new config files thoroughly for differences compared to the old ones. But getting the simple php code to run, comfuses me.

nass · 04-21-2013, 12:48 PM

UPDATE:
from the same pc where virtualbox and phpvirtualbox are installed, I actually CAN access the phpvirtualbox login screen if I type in the address bar any of the following:

- 127.0.0.1/phpvirtualbox
- "localhost"/phpvirtualbox
- <the pc's intranet ip address>/phpvirtualbox

I can NOT access the phpvirtualbox if I type:
- "hostname"/phpvirtualbox
- "hostname.atMyIntranet.domain"/phpvirtualbox

What I get is the message

Quote:

PHP is not being parsed by your web server. Make sure that PHP is installed.
Unable to continue.
Note: you may also see this message if you have opened index.html in your web browser directly rather than accessing it through your web server.

But access the server using other names (or ip addresses) it works fine.

From any other intranet pc, (where I can only use the "hostname" or "hostname.atMyIntranet.domain" in the address bar to access the server) i will not get this message - just a blank page.

So it seems it is not a problem with the phpvirtualbox, or the php configuration itself..
Could it be the apache server? could it be the squid proxy? (there is a transparent proxy setup as well).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

larryhaja · 04-21-2013, 08:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nass

- 127.0.0.1/phpvirtualbox
- "localhost"/phpvirtualbox
- <the pc's intranet ip address>/phpvirtualbox

I can NOT access the phpvirtualbox if I type:
- "hostname"/phpvirtualbox
- "hostname.atMyIntranet.domain"/phpvirtualbox

Something similar happened to me the other day when I upgraded VirtualBox from 4.2.4 to 4.2.12. I was using VirtualBox in headless mode on a CentOS box with phpvirtualbox being the front end being loaded by nginx. What you mention sounds a lot like what I went through.

When I upgraded it removed the /etc/vbox/vbox.cfg file. In that file it tells which interface the vboxwebservice binds too. I had to recreate that file and added the following.

Code:

VBOXWEB_USER=vbox
VBOXWEB_HOST=0.0.0.0
VBOXWEB_LOGFILE=/var/log/vboxweb.log

This is only a guess but it sounds like the vboxwebservice is bound too 127.0.0.1 (ie. localhost) instead of the external address of the host and phpvirtualbox can't connect to it.

nass · 04-22-2013, 08:54 AM

Hi there,
unfortunately this didn't help...but it comes as no surprise since the phpvirtualbox will actually startup fine when the address will be the ip of eth0 (and not the ip address of "lo" interface").

nass · 04-22-2013, 11:05 AM

more updates:
I have squid transparent proxy set up and redirect traffic from clients (even from the same server).
so I "tail -f" squid's "access.log".
When I open a tab with address http://localhost/phpvirtualbox, i get to see the following:

Code:

1366646183.540      6 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 1841 GET http://localhost.skails.home/phpvirt...s/language.php - DIRECT/127.0.0.1 text/javascript
1366646183.540      1 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 423 GET http://localhost.skails.home/phpvirt...js/phptest.php - DIRECT/127.0.0.1 text/html
1366646183.757     16 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 499 POST http://localhost.skails.home/phpvirtualbox/lib/ajax.php - DIRECT/127.0.0.1 text/html
1366646192.399      7 127.0.0.1 TCP_HIT/200 14644 GET http://localhost.skails.home/phpvirtualbox/ - NONE/- text/html
1366646192.469      3 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 1841 GET http://localhost.skails.home/phpvirt...s/language.php - DIRECT/127.0.0.1 text/javascript
1366646192.471      0 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 423 GET http://localhost.skails.home/phpvirt...js/phptest.php - DIRECT/127.0.0.1 text/html
1366646192.683     15 127.0.0.1 TCP_MISS/200 499 POST http://localhost.skails.home/phpvirtualbox/lib/ajax.php - DIRECT/127.0.0.1 text/html

skails.home is my local domain and it is appended automatically.

Now, if I open another tab at http://"hostname"/phpvirtualbox , nothing is printed in squid's access.log! as if the webserver does not (?) process the request somehow?

I checked with httpd's access.log and the same thing happens; nothing is wrtten when I access the site through its hostname.