This morning I was contacted by two different departments to report that the Agenda application used to schedule classes is not working. On investigation, I discovered that the login page is truncated immediately at the point where the first call to the database is made. After reading through the code, I couldn't see anything wrong, so I suspected a connection problem such as an ACL issue between web.uvic.ca/lang and csmgenr2 (the mysql server). The db is there, functioning, and accessible through PhpMyAdmin.

I raised a ticket with sysadmin, and MC got back to me to say that there doesn't seem to be a connection issue, but the error in the logs was with a PHP include:

2012-08-29T08:43:23-07:00 local@axolotl.comp.uvic.ca user.notice php_cgi: PHP
Warning: main() [<a href='function.include'>function.include</a>]: Failed
opening 'DB.php' for inclusion
(include_path='.:/usr/local/php-4.4.8/include/php:/usr/local/php-4.4.8/lib/php')
in
/home3/80/lang/www/agenda/Application_Files/script_files/php/database_connection.php
on line 11

The error comes when the db connection script tries to include DB.php, which is the PEAR library this project uses for accessing MySql. This sent me to check the PHP settings info in phpinfo.php, and I found a number of oddities:

• The PHP version is 4.4.9,
• the configure command output includes this: './configure' '--prefix=/usr/local/php-4.4.9', and
• the configuration file is here: /usr/local/php-4.4.9/lib/php.ini.
• HOWEVER, the extension_dir is /usr/local/php-4.4.8/lib/php/extension, and
• the include_path is .:/usr/local/php-4.4.8/include/php:/usr/local/php-4.4.8/lib/php.

My current theory is that when PHP was updated from 4.4.8 to 4.4.9, those key settings in the master php.ini file should have been changed, but weren't; and as a result, the include of DB.php is failing. I've reported this back to sysadmin, and I'm waiting for a response. In the meantime, I've tried overriding the include_path setting in a local php.ini, but I can't get that to work; perhaps those settings can't be overridden.

In the meantime, I could no longer bear to look at the logo which proclaimed "Agenda / Organize. Mangage. Simplfy" (sic, seriously), so I've fixed that.