andthennothing.net

So here is my “guide” to installing MoveableType (MT). I have actually installed MT once before and remeber it beeing somewhat cumbersome. I’m about to install MT not to use it but as an exercise.

So I have a quite freshly installed computer with WinXP Pro. I have installed XAMPP before, which is as easy as it gets. I didn’t get the Perl add-on, so that’s my first step. A hefty download and a lot of small files to install, so I can relax to the sound of the Daily Sourcecode (DSC) podcast… But the install is (almost) one-click, so no worries.

No idea if Perl (and Perl-Apache collaboration) works yet, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t. So I head off to MT’s site and download… and downloaaaad… Hmm… Their site is really slow. And download the “Limited Free Version” (1 author, 3 weblogs), which will do since I’m just trying it out. Need to register (or “register”) for the download. (And now DSC is over)

Looking at the /docs/mtinstall.html file in the .zip file. Hmmm… I see. By the way, I have a little itch, that I didn’t check if Perl works alright, so I go to http://localhost/xampp/perl-info.php and see that everything seems to work. Now it’s time to continue with the installation.

It’s seems like the Perl installation installed three ways of running Perl scripts. modperl which I guess is quite efficient, modperlasp (Apache::ASP I think) which seems to have a ASP-like syntax, and than old trustworthy CGI. The main difference between modperl and running CGI is that I suspect that modperl fires up one (or more?) instances of Perl which Apache uses for every page view, whereas it has to start a new instance of Perl for each page view when using CGI. I don’t know much about Perl and Apache, but that’s my bet. But since the MT scripts are .cgi I think CGI is the (only?) way to go. As XAMPP’s perl-info.php page states, the CGI directory is \xampp\cgi-bin\. So as I understand it now, the .cgi files should go in to the cgi-bin directory, and the other files should be elsewhere. You could probably also create a new directory and enable CGI on that directory, but let’s at least start with just using the existing cgi-bin directory (I’m not that fond of messing with Apache’s httpd.conf file).

But then again, I’m just installing MT to try it out, and the documentation is a bit vague on which file to place where, so let’s create a new directory \xampp\htdocs\mt and extract everything from the installation .zip file. Then I update the shebang (the first line) of the .cgi files to #!I:\development\xampp\perl\bin\perl -w. Without it, Apache won’t know where to find Perl to execute the scripts.

I will use the MySQL server functionality, which shouldn’t be a problem since XAMPP installed it for me earlier. (You have to do some extra steps here if you use the other options). Hmm… The guide talks something about setting up “[y]our weblog directories”. I guess that’s where the actual blog(s) will be generated (i.e. the output directory/ies). But I skip that step. :-)

CGIPath http://localhost/mt/
ObjectDriver DBI::mysql
Database mt
DBUser username
DBHost localhost

I called the database mt so let’s start PHPMyAdmin and add the database. http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ –> Create new database –> mt –> Create. Done. I think that should be enough, so I save the mt.cfg. And change the database password in mt-db-pass.cgi (you can set the MySQL password in http://localhost/xampp/xamppsecurity.php). I don’t like saving the password in plain text :-(.

Hmm… So now I have to set the permissions on the files. Not really sure what to do with this one. I’m on Windows remember? Not that there are no permissions in Windows, but I skip this step for not.. Hush, don’t tell anyone :-)

Let’s check the mt-check.cgi to see if everything is ok. http://localhost/mt/mt-check.cgi. Yikes. It seems like it worked. “Movable Type System Check Successful”. I thought I had to do something for Apache to execute the script, you see my Apache fu is weak. A few of the optional modules were missing, so I’ll look at that later perhaps.

Now I’m supposed to run mt-load.cgi. Fingers crossed. http://localhost/mt/mt-load.cgi. Finally, an error, everything worked too smoothly.

Bad ObjectDriver config: Connection error: Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client

Hmmm…. Didn’t see this one coming though. Ouch, my Perl fu is weak as well. I wonder if there is anything like irb for Ruby or Python interactive shell.

#!I:\development\xampp\perl\bin\perl -w
use DBI;
my $db;
$db = DBI->connect ("DBI:mysql:host=localhost;database=mt", 
    "username", "password", {PrintError => 0, RaiseError => 1});
$db->disconnect ();
exit (0);

and I got the following error:

File ‘C:\mysql\share\charsets\?.conf’ not found (Errcode: 2)
Character set ’#48’ is not a compiled character set and is not specified in the ‘C:\mysql\share\charsets\Index’ file
DBI connect(‘host=localhost;database=mt’,’username’,...) failed: Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client at mysqltest.cgi line 7

Hmm… Same error message. The easy way would be to give in and use Berkley DB. But not yet. So somewhere there is a hardcoded path to C:\mysql\\share\charsets\?.conf. I don’t even have a drive on the C drive (don’t ask). Looking through the Perl\bin directory I found the script dbish (DBI::Shell) where I get the same error when connecting to MySQL. There is also a mt script, which is kind of weird.

Now it seems like I found something. It seems like DBD::mysql tries to install something to c:\mysql\ by default. And since I don’t have a C drive (don’t ask) I guess something went wrong. So I guess this is quite unique problem for my computer. Most Windows computers have C drives (like 100% – 1). Wonder if I can install it manually…

This is taking waaaay too much time, I was just going to install this quickly, work tomorrow. TheRightThing would be to use Berkley DB and go on with my life. But a Perl installation with a faulty MySQL connection, is like… wrong. Wait a minute. MySQL Reference Manual :: 5.8.7 Problems With Character Sets seems to be my friend this late hour. It seems like my charset is not compiled into the binaries. The number #48 in the error message means latin1_general_ci, which I don’t have compiled support for. From the manual, enter the SQL query “show collation;” to see which charsets are compiled. I changed the following line in \xampp\mysql\bin\my.cnf from “collation-server = latin1_general_ci” to “collation-server = latin1_swedish_ci”. Now I don’t get that error anymore. But I still got the rest of the error (”... upgrading MySQL client”). Ok, I tried to run PPM to upgrade DBD::mysql, but of course PPM doesn’t start because of some version of some module is wrong :-(. That’s all I needed for be able to give in. Bye bye Perl-MySQL.

So now it’s 1:30 a.m. So I head of to bed, and continue tomorrow.

Ok, 16 hours later it’s time to get this thing to work. Let’s (nah, I haven’t used “let’s” too many times yet) back up a bit and go for the Berkley DB option. So first I create a the directory \xampp\htdocs\mt\db, then I comment out the stuff I wrote in mt.cfg and set the DataSource to \xampp\htdocs\mt\db, and remove the mt-db-pass.cgi. I guess it’s time to try running mt-load.cgi again. Fingers crossed… “System Initialization Complete”. Then I’m a nice boy and remove mt-load.cgi. Login at http://localhost/mt/mt.cgi as user Melody, password Nelson. Everything seems to works as it should. “Create Entry”. Enter some text. Save. “Rebuild site”, get the error “Use of uninitialized value in substitution iterator at I:/Development/xampp/htdocs/mt/lib/MT/Util.pm line 146.” It publishes some .html files, but my blog entry is not there. Hmm… Changing some settings for the blog. Creating the archives directory. Still the same problem. Oups, I’m such a noob, as the MSN kids would say. Didn’t change the status of the entry to “Publish”. Now I get a nice blog (but still get the error, but I don’t care since I’m just setting this thing up as an exercise).

So now you just have to set it up, and start blogging. I guess. But this set-up is probably quite insecure (remeber that I disregarded the permissions).

The setup was all in all quite smooth, albeit not a bit fuzzy at times. The main problem for me was, as you can see above, that the Perl-MySQL interface didn’t work. And that is not MT’s fault, it’s what you get when you try to use Windows. I guess that the problem wouldn’t appear, or be as large, had I installed everything manually instead of using XAMPP. But that would take much more time (disregarding my Perl troubleshooting session). However, I can understand people using other blogging engines.