Installation trouble on Debian etch

I'm having some trouble installing Omeka on Debian Etch running PHP5.2 and Apache 2.x.

When I navigate to omeka in my browser the page loads blank and neither PHP or Apache logs an error. mod_rewrite is enabled and I have .htaccess files in /admin and in Omeka's root directory. I've also tested PHP and PHP's error reporting and everything seems to check out.

I've been able to successfully install Omeka on my Mac's MAMP stack but no luck on the Debian web server. Here are the contents of my .htaccess files (if this is any help):

omeka root:

IfModule mod_php5.c>
        php_value display_errors 1
        php_flag zlib.output_compression On
        php_flag register_globals off
        php_value zlib.output_compression_level 5
</IfModule>

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}  .+\/archive\/
RewriteRule !\.(js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css)$ index.php

<FilesMatch "\.(php|ini)$">
 Order Allow,Deny
 Deny from all
</FilesMatch>

/admin:

php_value display_errors 1
php_flag zlib.output_compression On
php_value zlib.output_compression_level 5

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule !\.(js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css)$ index.php

This matches the .htaccess files on my successful MAMP stack install. I wish I had more information to give but this is all rather perplexing!

Thanks so much!

I am experiencing the exact same problem. I was able to narrow it down to issues with the database (I think). However my mysql database is setup correctly.

I was able to narrow it down to line 23 in install/install.php

I will keep digging

My gut feeling is that these two problems are unrelated, but I could be wrong

@rubinsta: Can you check to see that you've properly FTP'd the files to your server? If the htaccess file is properly routing then it should be sending requests through your index.php file - is this file empty?

@asnagy: Is this Andrew from code4lib? If so, greetings!

I looked at line 23 of the install file; is an exception being thrown, or how else are you seeing an error on that line? In any case line 23 executes the SHOW TABLES command on mysql, which could be handled differently if you're running a version of mysql that's below mySQL5 which Omeka requires to run by default. What version of mySQL are you running?

Thanks for the response...

I've ftp'd via a few different clients and even copied the files from a working install to the debian server, all with the same results. Here are the contents of my index.php file in the omeka root directory:

<?php
// Ladies and Gentlemen, start your timers
define('APP_START', microtime(true));

require_once 'paths.php';

define('ADMIN_THEME_DIR', BASE_DIR.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'admin'.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'themes');
define('THEME_DIR', BASE_DIR.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'themes');

require_once 'Omeka/Core.php';
$core = new Omeka_Core;
$core->initialize();

// Call the dispatcher which echos the response object automatically
$core->dispatch();

if ((boolean) $config->debug->timer) {
	echo microtime(true) - APP_START;
}
// We're done here.
?>

This matches the index.php on my working installs (I've since installed successfully on a debian desktop). The only installation step specific to my web server that I can think of is that I used unzip to uncompress omeka. I used Archive Manager on the Debian desktop and Stuffit on the Mac. Probably a red herring but I thought I'd through it into the mix.

rubinsta, Is your httpd.conf file on your Debian server allowing htaccess overrides? This can often be off by default. You'd want to look for the AllowOverrides directive.

That was it! Thanks a lot, jonlesser.

I'm glad that worked for you. It seems several people are running into problems with allowing overrides. I will see about adding a note to our install instructions.