The infamous WSOD and other newbie questions. White Screen!

New Member Joined: Sep 27, 2006 Posts: 6

First, I would like to appologize for the length of this post.
I have searched the forums and found lots of post that address
parts of my questions, but I feel that if I ask all of them on
one post, it could help a LOT of us. Especially those of us
new to RavenNuke. Here goes nothing....

1. Is RavnNuke76 all I need?

I have installed PHPnuke in the past using Fantastico (from what
I understand this is lame anyway.) Do I need to install PHPnuke
or is Raven the stand alone phpNuke CMS?

2. NukeSentinel, do I need it?

I have two phpNuke sites. They are used by a relativlely small
group of members and we dont see much traffic. We have never had
any hacking attempts or malicious traffic (that we know of!)
Should I even bother with it?

3. If yes - Do I need to update it on a regular basis?
Such as IP2Country Data, etc.

4. Can I migrate my users, forums, PMs, posts and data?
Should I do a full dump or just the users table? Do I
need to be careful when I import the dump?
Should I just downgrade my current install, would that be better?

5. Last but not least - The dreaded WSOD!
This is the main reason for my post. From what I can gather -
this is caused by parse errors from config.php? What exacty
are the erros. Here are my specific questions about the WSOD

a. If it was NukeSentinel blocking me, I would get the Invalid IP
error, correct?

b. I'm pretty sure my paths and database info is setup corrently,
here is what I am using. Pelase tell me if this is correct.

-------------
$dbhost = "localhost";
$dbuname = "mysite_rnuke";
$dbpass = "mypass";
$dbname = "mysite_rnuke";
$prefix = "nuke";
$user_prefix = "nuke";
$dbtype = "MySQL";
$sitekey = "somelongjumbleimadeupreallongwoot";
$gfx_chk = 7; <- I made this seven, could this be my problem?
$subscription_url = "";
$admin_file = "somelongrandomname";
$tipath = "images/topics/";
$display_errors = FALSE; <-tried TRUE, still white pages.
--------------

c. Ive seen some posts that attribute this to Firefox.
I do all the setup from Firefox. Is this a problem?

For now, this is all that I can think of. I really appreciate
this community and all of its hard work. I hope these questions
help other people that are new to Raven, such as myself.

Thanks,
Goodjorb
<3!woot!

Involved Joined: Dec 27, 2005 Posts: 296

1.

Short answer: yes.
Long answer: RavenNuke is phpnuke v.7.6 with chatservs latests patches and some other code fixes with a few essential add-on mods, such as Sentinel and NSN Groups.

2.

Sentinel does alot more than keeping hackers out.
Plus, the user/anonymous/user agent tracking in Sentinel can't be beat, besides script kiddies just love trolling around, so its better safe than sorry. And it's more useful for banning naughty members if you ever need to.

3.

Always a good idea to keep up to date.

4.

It depends on what version of Nuke you were previously using. You can migrate, but if you were using 7.8, which is what I think Fantasico is installing, then you need to run the downgrade script so the 7.8 database can conform with the 7.6 database structure.
I think the downgrade discussion is on here somewhere....
If you were running 7.6 before, I think you'll be ok to just dump the full SQL in.

5.

Do you have access to error logs on your server? This is where the errors will show up. If you do, check them out as they will give a better idea.
Most white screens are caused by a file or two not uploaded correctly or got corrupted in the process. At least that has been my experience 99.9999% of the time.
I use Firefox and haven't come across that...
this is the only part of the post I'm not able to give you a straight answer on....

PS. Thanks for the lovely format of your post. Such manners! Wink

registered · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 5:48 am

Quote:

If you were running 7.6 before, I think you'll be ok to just dump the full SQL in.

Regarding this statement here, you would need to make sure that your 7.6 installation that you are coming FROM has also had the NSN Groups database updates done on it. Otherwise, your nuke_messages, nuke_blocks, and nuke_modules tables will not transfer correctly. You can simply "run" the SQL statements that are found in the RN distro in file INSTALLATION/sql/rn76_nsngroups.sql on your FROM database.

HOWEVER, make sure you backup everything first, database and files, because as soon as you apply the NSN Groups database updates to your FROM database, if you are still using core PHP-Nuke files, you will get the WSOD when you try to update blocks, messages or modules.

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 8:03 am

Srhh and Montego have answered most of your questions. There's one that I can reply to from personal experience cause I thought the same way you do at one time till I got hacked. Hackers don't care what size your site is or what it's used for. Mostly they just want to get their jollies by sticking f*** you words in your forums or getting administrative privileges or whatever. They don't care if you are the CIA or the NY Times or just some family site devoted to putting up pictures of family reunions. They will troll around for PHPnuke sites and try various exploits and if they find a vulnerable site they will hack it. So yeah you you need Sentinel and the best way to get it is with a Ravennuke release that incorporates it together with a multitude of other patches that make Nuke more secure.

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 1:43 pm

Thanks for the replies!

I will check for my error logs and see what useful information I can gather.

=)

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:17 pm

No error logs!

What should I do?

Any suggestions on this dreaded WSOD?

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 11:06 pm

ZOmg!

Fixed it! - Here is the solution that I have found for my specific problem....

I decided to take a risk and just use the downgrader script on one of my live sites...after making a complete backup ofcourse.

I ran the downgrader, and then uploaded the entire ravennuke html dir over the top of my nuke dir.

I didnt run throught the automated setup, like you normally would for a fresh install, and it WORKED! woot. I now have my good ol site back, working like a champ but with no more TINYmce! woot and a much more secure foundation.

Therefore the problem has to be (for me) within the generation of the tables and their population. Im guessing Nuke Sent?

Anyway....Now I have this new NukeSent "thingy" to read up on....

./starts forum search

=)

Thanks All =)

registered · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 1:03 pm

Make sure you use the setup to install the NSN Groups and Nuke Sentinel tables

Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:20 pm

ddw