Please Help, I cannot get a single plugin to work!

[ohmster]

First off, my version info:
The most recent version of Lifetype is: lifetype-1.2.10_r6967
Download
Release notes
LifeType
The currently installed version of LifeType is:
lifetype-1.2.8_r6440

So I have to upgrade? I have lifetype on a godaddy server, being used in an iframe to make it fit in with the style and navigation bars of the site. The release notes say I can upgrade only from 1.2.9, since I am running 1.2.8, can I upgrade or must I do a complete wipe and install to get this upgrade? My client will have a FIT if I have to do this! How do I upgrade at this point?

Second, I tried to install the smilie pluging. Although it is installed, I get no smile bar on the comment window and no matter where I paste that code for the common template, all I get is error messages on the comment page and no smilie bar. The plugin is still installed, I have yet to see it work, but I have finally given up on it.

The BIG issue now is spam. I installed two spam plugins, here is my plugin page:
(Sorry about the formatting)

Identifier Version Author Description Actions
akismet 20080228 Paul Westbrook (Akismet php library provided by Bret Kuhns) Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web serivce to see if they look like spam or not. Info
authimage 20100113 Mark Wu This plugin offers extra comment authentication for LifeType. Info
badbehavior 20080228 The Lifetype Project Bad Behavior for LifeType Info
smileys 20070226 The LifeType Project The plugin offer smileys to comments and articles. Info

Akismet -Ddoes not actually appear to do anything at all. It does not show on any page and I still get tons of spam.

authimage - Shows NO image on the comment page or box to type in an answer. Whenever I enable it, no comments match the authimage because there is no image displayed on the comment page, nor is there a box to type in what you see.

badbehavior - I have no clue as to what this plugin does. It does not show up on the plugin settings page.

smilies - Does not work at all, although it is turned on, no smilie bar appears in comment page, no matter where I paste the code into the commentForm.template, I get error messages on the comment post page and no smilie bar. I have tried very hard to make this work and have pasted it in several places. Can you please give a "search for this text and replace or insert right after" like they do with PHPBB?

I need help, bad, with upgrading LifeType, how do I do it with my current version installed. I really need some sort of detailed instructions but I am not a total computer ignoramous. See my website here: http://www.paulspcworks.com/ This is NOT where LifeType is installed.

My LifeType can be seen here:
http://www.jeanclaudearts.com/blog.html

Please help me John, my client is about to have fits and conniptions about all of the spam. He cannot activate comments at all because I cannot get a single plugin to work with LifeType. Is it because my version is too old? How can I update it without losing all of the stuff that is there now?

I am at my wits end, please help me!

Thank you.
Sincerely,
--
Paul Baio
http://www.paulspcworks.com/

[jondaley]

You can upgrade from 1.2.8 to 1.2.9 and then from 1.2.9 to 1.2.10 using the appropriate changes-only upgrade file each time.

I haven't used the smiley plugin myself, but with most (all?) plugins, you can paste them wherever you want in the template.
It sounds like maybe your template_check is turned off, so the new templates aren't being noticed?

For spam, I simply use hidden input, that takes care of almost all of my spam.

badbehavior is sort of a "special" plugin, in that we distribute it installed by default. You don't have to do anything with it, it just watches how users access your blog and blocks ones that look suspicious.

[ohmster]

You can upgrade from 1.2.8 to 1.2.9 and then from 1.2.9 to 1.2.10 using the appropriate changes-only upgrade file each time.

I haven't used the smiley plugin myself, but with most (all?) plugins, you can paste them wherever you want in the template.
It sounds like maybe your template_check is turned off, so the new templates aren't being noticed?

For spam, I simply use hidden input, that takes care of almost all of my spam.

badbehavior is sort of a "special" plugin, in that we distribute it installed by default. You don't have to do anything with it, it just watches how users access your blog and blocks ones that look suspicious.

Thank you for replying John. You tried to help with smilies before but since you could not access the files directly, it was near impossible for you to really help. This time, if I can get you to help again, I will give full server access to the files so that you can help troublehoot if you would not mind.

You take a lot for granted that users of lifetype are coders and can just put code anywhere and it will work and if it doesn't they can quickly spot the problem. I am not a good coder like that. I use Dreamweaver and do some html stuff by hand.

John, what is "Hidden Input"? How does that eliminate spam? My friend who's lifetype blog I made for him enables comments and the comments are all for Viagra, Ciallis, low rates, and crap like that. How do you stop that stuff? What is hidden input?

It sounds like maybe your template_check is turned off, so the new templates aren't being noticed?

Huh, where is this "feature" that allows one ot check templates or not? Is it in the admin panel or some code somewhere on some page? Please be a bit more specific please.

I will now try to upgrade, hope I can do it, and hope to be able to find out how to eliminate or greatly reduce the amount of "Viagra" comments to the blog. Thank you.
Paul

[ohmster]

Dear John (Or anyone that can help please.),

I need to get some sort of working anti-spam mechanism setup for my friend's lifetype blog and I have an older version of the blog in place. It does work quite good, by the way, and it is hosted at godaddy.com on a Linux server with FTP access. We have php but no cgi on this server. LifeType did install and does work well, except for plug-ins. They have never worked at all. But that will come next, time to upgrade without hosing the entire blog.

John told me to get the two upgrade files to get from 1.2.8 to 1.2.10. I have the right zip files and have opened them on my Windows 7 machine and will be uploading them shortly. There are NO instructions on how to do this whatsoever so of course, this makes me nervous as hell seeing as how the blog works quite well right now and to hose it would really suck bad. Maybe I should mirror the LifeType blog on my home machine prior to installing these updates. This is what I've got:

fix-for-quick-updaters.txt
lifetype-1.2-9-upgrade-lifetype-1.2.10
lifetype-1.2.8-upgrade-lifetype-1.2.9

These upgrades are just folders full of subfolders and php files. One folder in each set is called Install and inside of there is one file, files.properties.php. Both upgrade folder trees have this install folder. So since there are No Instructions whatsoever, how exactly does one actually "do" and upgrade like this? Just upload it to my current lifetype folder, allow it to overwrite if asked, and that is it? No configging to do or script to run? And then what, upload the second upgrade batch of folders and do the same thing? Somehow, this does not sound Kosher to me, I will backup the lifetype blog just in case and could someone, somehow give me the install instructions? Thank you,.

Paul

[jondaley]

backups are always good, for any software, and yes, there aren't any instructions, because all you do is upload the files.

[jondaley]

hiddeninput is simply another anti-spam plugin, and I've used it for years, and get almost no spam. The essay-spam writers are smart enough to manually pay people to write the spams, so they can trivially get around hiddeninput, because it is only aimed at automated spammers, but since captchas no longer work for any application, and are easier for computers to get than humans, in most cases, they are a complete waste of time.

http://wiki.lifetype.net/index.php/Plugins#Anti_Spam

I agree there aren't a lot of documents for LifeType, but it seems that you haven't even tried to look around.
If you go to the wiki and click on "upgrade" you'll get this link:
http://wiki.lifetype.net/index.php/Upgrade
that talks about major and minor upgrades, and has instructions for both.

[jondaley]

The "template_check" is a setting in the administration->Templates, and if that is disabled (not the default), the software runs quicker by not checking whether or not the template files were modified, but just uses the cached versions. It is good for speed/cpu load, etc. but bad if you are actually trying to modify the templates.

[ohmster]

Thank you, thank you, thank you Jon. Let's do this inline style as there are three posts to answer to,

I agree there aren't a lot of documents for LifeType, but it seems that you haven't even tried to look around.
If you go to the wiki and click on "upgrade" you'll get this link:
http://wiki.lifetype.net/index.php/Upgrade

Jon, I did not know what a wiki was or where to find it. Now that I know where it is, consider it bookmarked and I for sure will use it now. I was simply looking in the wrong place for the information that I need. I will usually join in a web forum on the subject to get directions and direction on where to go for what I need. You have given me both. Thank you.

backups are always good, for any software, and yes, there aren't any instructions, because all you do is upload the files.

Thank you thank you. I created a backup of the blog here on my local Linux server before screwing with it and even wrapped it all up in a tgz tarball, just in case. And upload the files is what I did. I just was not sure if there was an "upgrade.php" page that I would have to run after doing so. Apparently not, it worked quite well and really did look nice. Good job Jon!

hiddeninput is simply another anti-spam plugin, and I've used it for years, and get almost no spam. The essay-spam writers are smart enough to manually pay people to write the spams, so they can trivially get around hiddeninput, because it is only aimed at automated spammers, but since captchas no longer work for any application, and are easier for computers to get than humans, in most cases, they are a complete waste of time.

If you say it is good, then I want it. Forget the captias and authimage. If hidden input is something that I can get installed and works, I will use it. Thanks again buddy.

Okay, now I have some good places to start, I will get to work. Do you think all of the red files that show up on the version check will be a problem Jon? See picture. What should I do about this? Thank you.

Sincerely,
Paul

[jondaley]

You're welcome.

As far as the wrong version stuff - yes, I would count that as critical. I haven't heard of other people complaining about it, so I'd expect the upgrade files and the full versions to be good.

You should probably try to re-upload one of those files that it says is broken, and see if that fixes it.
You could also try re-uploading the install/files.properties.php and see if that fixes it. You could try getting the install/files.properties.php from the full version too, as that is definitely the right version.

I wonder if you had an older version like 1.2.7, and got the wrong upgrade file or something?

[ohmster]

You're welcome.



As far as the wrong version stuff - yes, I would count that as critical. I haven't heard of other people complaining about it, so I'd expect the upgrade files and the full versions to be good.

Hmmmm....

You should probably try to re-upload one of those files that it says is broken, and see if that fixes it.
You could also try re-uploading the install/files.properties.php and see if that fixes it. You could try getting the install/files.properties.php from the full version too, as that is definitely the right version.

I could do that. I have the installed version on the godaddy server. I have the unupgraded version on my Linux server and it is in an html accessible directory, but without it being "installed" with a running database, I doubt that I can connect to it with a browser for a version check. Let's try and see what happens. Going to access index.php with web browser and see what happens...
Well, http://192.168.15.2/~ohmster/jcl/lifetype/ got me a blank, white page. Let's try accessing the index.php page directly, although I am sure that apache does this automatically...

Same thing, took forever to give me a plain, white page. View source? Source on index.php.htm is nothing at all. Pure blank page. That will not work. If I knew what file to look for to determine the initial version then I could check it. version.php same blank white page. Well, I can read version.php in vim anyway.

<?php
$version = "lifetype-1.2.8_r6440";
?>

Okay well I will try uploading the files, maybe one or two for test, run the version check again, to see if this will satisfy the LifeType blog file version check and let you know how it goes. Thanks for your time and your help jon, and the others that help too, just as much thanks to you guys!

Paul

I wonder if you had an older version like 1.2.7, and got the wrong upgrade file or something?

[jondaley]

The blank page probably means your server requires an .htaccess change or something like that. You should at least get an error that says you need to run the wizard, or can't connect to database. But, yeah - it might be a little hard to get that working. Though - if you simply copied the config.properties.php file from your working installation, that might make it work. But, you'll need to look in the error log to see what the error is, and whether you need to change something.

[ohmster]

The blank page probably means your server requires an .htaccess change or something like that. You should at least get an error that says you need to run the wizard, or can't connect to database. But, yeah - it might be a little hard to get that working. Though - if you simply copied the config.properties.php file from your working installation, that might make it work. But, you'll need to look in the error log to see what the error is, and whether you need to change something.

Hello Jon.

Well, I have php on my Linux server, but LifeType was never setup to run on it. I simply downloaded the zip file, uploaded the contents in a Windows FTP program to a Linux server at godaddy and did whatever setup, from there. I am sure that a database was setup for it somehow but I did not do that on my local Linux Server. Okay, I will visit the index.php page and do a tail -f on the httpd error log for the site or the php log if there is one. Let's give it a shot.

Well, I have more than one domain on this machine and since this rotten motorola router from Vonage forces me to access my server by internal IP and I cannot use my domain names locally anymore, I had no idea of which log to check but I found it. Hitting the lifetype directory locally via web browser will cause this to show up in the error logs for the apache server.

[Tue Apr 06 21:52:21 2010] [error] [client 192.168.15.3] ModSecurity: Unable to retrieve collection (name "global", key "global"). Use SecDataDir to define data directory first. [hostname "www.paulspcworks.com"] [uri "/~ohmster/jcl/lifetype/"] [unique_id "S7vlVX8AAAEAAAZMYSMAAAAB"]
[Tue Apr 06 21:52:21 2010] [error] [client 192.168.15.3] ModSecurity: Unable to retrieve collection (name "ip", key "192.168.15.3"). Use SecDataDir to define data directory first. [hostname "www.paulspcworks.com"] [uri "/~ohmster/jcl/lifetype/"] [unique_id "S7vlVX8AAAEAAAZMYSMAAAAB"]

What all that means right now I don't know, late, tired, and probably not important as I have no intentions of running lifetype locally on my own server.

Paul

[jondaley]

I have heard of problems with modsecurity breaking various things, though this sounds like it isn't configured correctly yet. But, I agree, I wouldn't bother working on a server that you don't care about having it work on.

[ohmster]

I have heard of problems with modsecurity breaking various things, though this sounds like it isn't configured correctly yet. But, I agree, I wouldn't bother working on a server that you don't care about having it work on.

Jon,

Lifetype was never "installed" on my Linux server, I simply downloaded a copy of what is installed, setup, and is working on the godaddy Linux server for my friend. At one time and many distributions of Red Hat ago, I had a good, working mysql database installed, with MyPHP Admin, and I had phpBB, Coppermine Photo Gallery (Excellent free photo gallary code!), and AWStats running on it. Since Fedora 9 went EOL and they stopped producing and releasing updates for it, I never bothered to upgrade my Linux distro because it worked SO well, everything worked so well, even the 3D desktop with beryl and the spinning cube desktop.

Well, you leave an unprotected, outdated OS on the net for years and you are just asking for it, and sure enough, I got hit. Some script kiddies found an apache exploit, got in, and turned my Linux machine into an online constant spambot. I could not understand why my PC was running at 90% CPU usage when it should be doing nothing at all, found the errant process, killed it, found out that it was a plant and that I got rooted, took the machine down at the ever-insistent comp.os.linux.security community. I went to them for help and they demanded that I get that machine offline, NOW! And do NOT put it back online until you upgrade the distro. As much as I did not want to hear that, it was the right thing to do so I had to do it. I run Fedora core 12 now and do have mysql-5.1.44-1.fc12.i686 and php-5.3.2-1.fc12.i686 installed, along with 3 FQDNs, but I never got back to the nice setup that I had, long ago, as cool as it was, for my family to post their pictures, have an online address book, and a family event calendar as well as a family bulliten board.

I work very long, hard hours now, do not have the time to enjoy setting up my Linux the way I really like it but do have the core services and things I need installed and running and tweaked. But I have no time to setup mysql, php, phpbbg, Coppermine, my phpadmin, and awstats again. Maybe some day, when the economy gets better and I have more time for "fun stuff" like my own Linux server and network controller. But not these days.

Goodness, I sure did digress, didn't I? Well, like I said, LifeType was not properly installed on this machine, it was only brought down via FTP to serve as a backup in the event that anything went wrong with the upgrade process. That is why it does not work locally and why I do not persue it.

Maybe it woud not be hard to install a working copy of LifeType on my own machine but I am upset with the replacement router that Vonage sent me. My Linksys would do NAT so that I could ftp or http over to ohmster.com and be in my own machine. Now with this rotten Motorola router, anytime I try to access my own domains from inside my own network, I get the router admin page and NOT my domain server.

Take care Jon, nice talking to you.

Paul

[jondaley]

As long as you have a copy of the files and a copy of the database, you don't need to install LifeType ("install" means "run wizard.php" in LifeType terms). Copying would be fine (as long as the files are right, and they didn't get edited by your hacker).