Fun with Wordpress running on a univeristy Veritas server

Ah, Wordpress, you slippery devil, you got the best of me this time. Back in May, I was asked to install WordPress on a university server. Seems like no problem, after all, WordPress is famous for the "5 minute install," right? That's what I thought.

Until I was informed that this particular Veritas environment runs PHP from CGI. Well, that, in itself, is not really a problem. What is a problem is that the system admins hadn't planned on anyone running PHP, apparently. To get a PHP script to work, this is what you have to do:

II. How to use PHP on Veritas/Champion?

For security reasons, php scripts must be configured just like Perl scripts on Veritas and Champion.

1. Every php script must have the following as the first line in the file:

#!/usr/local/bin/php

Note: Any php script you call directly (i.e. a url in a web browser) must have #!/usr/local/bin/php as the first line. If you have php files that you are executing with an include, these include files should not have #!/usr/local/bin/php, because they are inserted into a running script.

2. You may use either .php or .php4 as the file extension.

3. The script must have owner execute permission. We strongly recommend using "700" (owner has read, write, and execute privileges) for good security.

For example, where "script.php4" is the name of the file containing the script, change the file permission as follows.

chmod 700 script.php4

What? Yeah, that's okay for maybe a single script. How about a whole CMS in PHP? So, off I go to contact the admins to see if there's some kind of mistake. There is not. I ask if they have ever heard of WordPress, or have ever gotten it running on the servers. I am told, sure, we can run it, here's a text file of all the files you need to add the bash and chmod. It was at least 20 files. Wow, simply amazing.

So, off I go, changing files, chmodding like crazy. I got it running....well, running if you consider little things like performance and page load times quite insignificant.

Next, I was asked how to have multiple WordPress installs off this one directory...without using WordpressMU. Well, that's easy, duplicate the install, change some settings, and add a different db prefix in the config file.

In anticipation of having to do this many times, I figured I would create a "sandbox" of sorts, based on the lastest version. All was well including chmodding and adding bash... until I actually ran the install script. I get this kind little message:

ERROR: WordPress 2.3.1 requires MySQL 4.0.0 or higher

Again, what? I'm thinking "isn't MySQL up to around oh, i dont know, 6?" Well, apparently we are now running three versions behind, and I can't even use the most secure, up to date, and feature-complete version of WordPress. Good lord.

So, I guess it's back to an old version for me, at least until our supposed migration happens.

Posted by MtheoryX on 11/26 at 04:41 PM

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