Rackspace Cloud

[Philaap]

Hi guys,

I am trying to install v9 onto rackspace cloud server, I get to the last step (mail server) when I get the following error message (image attached).



This error message does not seem to relate to smtp settings and I am pretty sure they are correct. Any ideas on whats causing this?

Thanks

Phil

[Mike Hughes]

Actinic sends email by http'ing it up the server and then sending it via smtp from there.

It sounds as if it's unable to send the test email to to the server.

Is anything blocking access to the server or is the website live? What's the url?

Mike

[Philaap]

Hi Mike,
I'm having further issues. Are you familiar with how cloud hosting works? It's distributed, so files you upload by FTP aren't instantly available by HTTP like they are for normal hosting. It's my understanding that Actinic uploads some files by FTP, then attempts to access them through HTTP. As you can see on cloud hosting this isn't always available right away, so I think this is what is triggering the error:-

Actinic received a server error from the web server. The CGI scripts are not executing properly on the server. The error could be caused by several things. Check:
- the 'Path to the Perl shell'
- the 'CGI script extension'
- the 'Path to CGI-BIN'
- the 'CGI-BIN URL.
- the amount of web space left on your server
- if your server is configured to accept POSTs to CGI scripts
- the permissions on the server:

On Linux/Unix based servers the permissions should be:
cgi-bin (755) – drwxr-xr-x
Online Store Folder (777) – drwxrwxrwx
On Windows based servers (need to be checked with the hosting company):
IIS
cgi-bin = read/execute
Online Store Folder = read/write/execute
NTFS
cgi-bin = Catalog's FTP account needs 'Change' permissions on the directory
Online Store Folder = Catalog's FTP account needs 'Change' permissions on the directory AND the IUSR_<servername> account needs to have 'Change' permissions on the directory

Run Web | Configure Web Site Details... to review your web site configuration.

I'm a Perl programmer, path to Perl and everything is correct.

When this error happened, I checked the cgi-bin by FTP I saw none of the .pl files were 755. So I changed them to 755 and tried to publish again. This time no error, but instead it go so far and the upload box disappeared with the mouse staying with an hourglass. I tried restarting Actinic and publishing again, but now the upload box doesn't even appear, you just get the mouse with hourglass. I also tried rebooting my PC, but got the same.

The only way I got publish to work again, was to delete all the files off the server by FTP and start again. But of course back to square one.


Has Actinic been tested on cloud hosting? Has anyone got actinic working on cloud hosting?


Lyle

[Mike Hughes]

Actinic does ftp the perl and support files to the server, but AFAIK email is sent just using http to access the email function that's already on the server.

Any delay in distributing the perl scripts in the cloud should be minimal so I'd be surprised if that's the problem.

What happens when you run a network settings test? That tests the scripts and tries to send an email. Does that work without any errors?

Mike

[Philaap]

Actinic does ftp the perl and support files to the server, but AFAIK email is sent just using http to access the email function that's already on the server.

Sorry, I should have been clear. Phil got past the SMTP issue he was having, this is an issue with Publishing the site.

Any delay in distributing the perl scripts in the cloud should be minimal so I'd be surprised if that's the problem.

It's not always minimal, when installing our affiliate software the delay from uploading a file to being able to HTTP to it was sometimes 30secs>. I'm quite concerned that the file permissions aren't getting set by FTP, why could this be?

What happens when you run a network settings test? That tests the scripts and tries to send an email. Does that work without any errors?

This test is passing. What script does it upload to the server to test so I can take a look?


Lyle

[Duncan Rounding]

...
What script does it upload to the server to test so I can take a look?...

I beileve it's this script:
C:\Program Files\Actinic v9\Original\TestSettings.pl

[Mike Hughes]

Sorry Lyle. I thought this was a follow up to the same problem.

So this is a cgi acripts error on publishing? Hmm. Odd, especially as the test script passes.

From what I know, which has mostly been picked up here and there (and could easily be wrong), the process is:

1. Actinic ftp's the files to the server with temporary file names.
2. Once the files are there actinic runs a file management script that:
- deletes the old files
- renames the new ones
- sets the permissions to make them accessable
- Confirms everything OK.

(I believe it does it this way to minimise the transition time during an update)

I suspect the problem is happening with the file management script. I'm not aware of an http test during an upload but I guess there could easily be one right at the end to ensure things are where they ought to be,

The area I'd be looking at is checking that the scripts have the same ownership rights as the owner. i.e. that the file management script is allowed to alter the permissions on the rest of the files.

I'd also get actinic support involved at the same time as it is possible that there's an http test involved, whcih as you say could be failing if there's a significant delay between the files being uploaded and becoming available on the cloud.

Mike

[Philaap]

We have tryed to manually generate the site and upload it via ftp. Whilst alot of the site now works we still have issues with the login script.

A General Script Error Occurred
Error: The requested file (acatalog/index.html) is outside the scope of the script. If you believe the requested page should be served please contact the site operator.

Obviously this is not ideal as it is no longer a supported function.


Here are the network settings, it passes the test and the looks correct to me. The ftp file structure is as follows

/www.therawfoodco.com
--/web
----/content
----/cgi-bin

Code:

HTTPPROXYMODE 0
HTTPPROXYADDRESS
HTTPPROXYPORT 80
HTTPPROXYUSER
HTTPPROXYPASSWORD
FTPPROXYMODE 0
FTPPROXYADDRESS
FTPPROXYPORT 21
FTPPROXYUSER
FTPPROXYPASSWORD
SCRIPTID 1
SCRIPTEXT .pl
SMTPHOST localhost
WEBSITEURL http://www.therawfoodco.com
IGNOREPASSIVEERRORS true
USERELATIVECGIURLS false
PATHTOPERL /usr/bin/perl
USEENHANCEFTP false
FTPCLIENTTIMEOUT 60000
FTPRETRYDELAY 3000
FTPKEEPALIVEINTERVAL 30000
FTPSILENT false
FTPMAXRETRIES 3
FTPCONNECTTIMEOUT 60000
SMTPAUTHREQUIRED false
SMTPUSERNAME
SMTPPASSWORD
COMPRESSIONPACKETSIZE 1024
COMPRESSEDUPLOAD false
CATALOGURL http://www.therawfoodco.com/acatalog/
ONLINESTOREFOLDERNAME acatalog
CGIBINURL http://www.therawfoodco.com/cgi-bin/
PATHFROMCGITOCATALOG ../content/acatalog/
CODEBASE ./
FTPHOST ftp.therawfoodco.com
FTPUSERNAME ******
FTPPASSWORD ******
PATHTOCGIBIN /www.therawfoodco.com/web/cgi-bin/
USEPASSIVEFTP false
FTPPATHFROMCGITOCATALOG ../content/acatalog/

Anything look wrong above?

Phil

[Mike Hughes]

PATHFROMCGITOCATALOG ../content/acatalog/

I believe this is supposed to be the web path. i.e. it should ../acatalog

Mike

[Philaap]

That makes sense although the network test now gives me the following error.

http://community.actinic.com/attachm...4&d=1264787837

I went ahead with the publish to web and it got all the way to the end when I recieved the following error message

http://community.actinic.com/attachm...1&d=1264788564

Phil

[Mike Hughes]

Odd.

Looking at the site I can see that everything seems to be in the right place. the problem appears to be that the scripts can't find / access the files they needs from the acatalog folder.

So the error I get on 'view basket' is

A General Script Error Occurred

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Error: Error opening configuration file ../acatalog/prompt.fil. No such file or directory
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Press the Browser back button and try again or contact the site owner.

But prompt.fil is there and opens fine in the browser. It also opens fine as http://www.therawfoodco.com/cgi-bin/...log/prompt.fil

I'm surprised that the scripts are referencing the file as ../acatalog/ as that implies they're using the server file structure rather than the web, which I always thought was why we had two variants of 'path to cgi-bin'.

If 'view basket' works with ../content/acatalog/ then I'd go back to that.

Try doing a purge and refresh to make sure there aren't any problems from previous efforts.

Is this cloud hosting using unix or windows? I'm still wondering if there's a problem with the permissions settings which are often more complicated under windows.

Mike

[Andy Warner]

you guys get actinic working on rackspace cloud?

im currently experiencing ftp timeouts, disconnects etc.

any ideas??

[Andy Warner]

rackspace US cloud hosting - working

I've got the US rackspace cloudhosting working now - seems OK 99% - occassional caching issue......

email server is localhost by the way, if you need to know!

it is slow though.

[chris ashdown]

silly question but what is a cloud server and it's benifits

[Andy Warner]

I don't know really!