Can you please help me ... willing to pay ...

Hi everyone.
Earlier this month we switched from a reseller account with cpanel access to our own vserver. Before making the switch we made sure that everything was up to par for Dolphin ... double, triple, and quadruple checked everything. The vserver is part of a quad core 64 bit system and we have 2 GB of ram dedicated to us, up to 8 GB burstable. We have a dedicated IP number and several domains that we have are all running with that IP. We can treat this vserver just like a regular server and it has Debian 6.01 Squeeze installed on it. When the transfer was completed, apparently the system admin was having some issues with SQL databases.
Our Dolphin 7 community, currently at 7.06 is located at: www.steinfein.org

Although everything appears to be running just fine at first glance, we're experiencing some odd issues that we have no clue how to correct. All of the links to various pages seem to work fine, users can log in, but that's when the problems begin, even with the admin account.
Please see the screenshots too.

When a user tries to upload video or music files (probably photos too) the flash uploader appears to go through the motion of uploading, but upon completion returns a 404 error. The error file does not appear in unapproved, failed, or anywhere else. It just doesn't exist. If the user switches to the "standard uploader" followed by browsing to a file on the hard disk manually, it too appears to start the upload process ... but then the upload circle just turns and turns indefinitely. No returned errors though, it just keeps on turning.

If a user tries to send a blog or if the admin tries to write some news ... this actually works, even though there's no tinymcs menu visible anymore. There are some text menu items that can be clicked on for font selection and so on, but none of the menu buttons are there anymore. All of those are who knows where ... ???

Upon logging out, the homepage no longer returns. Now there's just a blank logout screen with nothing in it. Even worse, unless you reboot the computer, that screen is kept alive. In other words, if I return to the login screen the following day, the browser page will open up with me already logged in.

Also, deleting a spam account now only works if the page is refreshed.
I've tried clearing the entire cache but that made no difference at all.

I'm pretty certain that all of this is related to one and the same problem since all of these issues arose simultaneously, as soon as the switch to the vserver was completed. I'd sincerely appreciate some help with this and like the topic title mentions, I'd be willing to pay something to have this issue resolved. Thank you.

Did you change the permissions on all the directories that need to be writable (777)?

I can not for the life of me remember how to find that page which lists all of the permission settings in Dolphin7. I checked everything that I can think of in the admin panel. This used to be readily available at some point ... I just don't remember where ...

Never mind, I finally found it under Admin ---> Tools ---> Host Tools
There are a few items to correct, I'll be back.

Geeez, I desperately need some help with this ... I have no idea why our D7 is behaving this way?

All of the file permissions are set correctly now, but correcting the few settings that were off (5 or 6 of them) made no difference whatsoever. I included some more, better screenshots to show what's going on.

The blank logout screen is still there, but it's only blank with Firefox. With Chromium an error message actually appears. I've also included a couple of screenshots showing some settings, hoping that someone can enlighten me as to where any needed changes would need to be done on the server. File location and file name would help tremendously here (the server has Apache & Debian 6).

Another screenshot shows the editor problem better ... where a user can click on fonts for a large selection of font faces, but that text menu is all there is. No tiny_mce buttons anywhere. Crazy ...

Finally, one more screenshot shows the busy symbol for uploading files. Regardless if flash or regular uploader, both of them seem to work, but then no file shows up anywhere. Heck, with google Chrome you can even see the file upload progress going from 0% to 100% in the lower left corner ... but nothing ever shows up.

Again, I'm willing to pay for some help. I really really need to get the site working properly once more. Any help would be appreciated.

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you mentioned it happened after moving to a new server, it's possible that you skipped few files or got corupted in the transfer process.

i would recommend a new install and go from there.

Thanks, but that's exactly why I was asking for help. Yes, all of these symptoms came about from the move to the new vServer. I'm pretty sure that everything is there since the files came from my personal backup. My knowledge of SQL databases is very limited though and the admin who did the installation on the new vServer indicated to me that he was having difficulties with the SQL files.

I don't dare make a new installation because I'm too paranoid that I'll really mess things up, especially since it is a licensed version. It's still just a hobby domain with very few members, but I take the fact that everything isn't working right, even if it's only for one member, very serious.

I've been running Dolphin 7 since it came out but I always paid for updates, mod installations, and things like that to make sure that nothing gets messed up. Rayz has taken care of my updates in the past, along with his flash mod upgrades. He's also the one who suggested that I ask for help here.

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3 days and counting ...
Nobody stepping forward to physically help ...
Not even when someone is offering to pay for assistance ...
Assistance that's required for a licensed, branded, yet non-profit domain ...

How does that make Dolphin look to anyone considering using this community platform?
To say that I sincerely regret ever having become involved with Dolphin doesn't begin to cover it.
I'm the proud owner of a licensed, worthless community that can't be used at all. Great ...

on the server you moved from, what method was php complied? 

suphp | DSO | mod_suphp | fcgi

do you still have access to the files from the server where you moved from? 

can you start the transfer over. i dont think your files are corrupted, though if there were problems with the database, this would immediately raise red flags for me. 

the transfer should not be this difficult, basically and though not sure what method you used, but i would tar public_html with a flag to preserve permissions, assuming both machines were built the same for apache and php. 

wget files from old server to new server

unpack files

sql dump, then wget sql from old server to new server

create and restore database dump

clearing all cache. if database name was changed, make sure connection paramters are correct. 

the behaviors you are experiencing should be showing some evidence in the log files on the server. the 500 error that you are getting from google when trying to upload a file, indicates to me, though just fishing here, that you have a configuration problem on the server vs the files. 

i.e. security is set too loose or too tight, and causing it to gripe. 

the other nuance i have seen create some issue, has been that annoying htmlPurifier. 

moving dolphin is not for the novice, i can assure you, specifically if the site has any size to it. 

oh well i know thats not really any help, but just an observation. 

your error logs should have some good information on what is going on. 

surprisingly your hosting service is not helping you out with this? 

Thanks DosDawg.
Yes, I do have a full backup from our old (cpanel) reseller setup. You're right about "it shouldn't be so difficult" and we've moved this domain twice before to other servers. Didn't have a problem then. However, this is the first time that we've leased a vServer and I'm wondering if that might have something to do with it?

Before ordering the vServer, I specifically inquired about dolphin requirements and vServer compatibility. Even sent them the wiki requirements and server suggestion links as posted on boonex. I was assured that our vServer would function in the same manner as a root server, only having to deal with some disk space limitations (I have 180 GB available, less than 40 GB used) and memory limitations (I have 2 GB assigned permanently, up to 8 GB burstable).

What really has me stumped, are the php.ini settings for our domain ... which has me wondering if perhaps the issues are related to the initial vServer settings by the server company? For example:

Admin panel ... tools ... hosting tools ...
Shows upload_max_filesize of 2 MB even though the physical php.ini file for the domain has the recommended setting by boonex. Same applies to post_max_size which shows 8 MB in the admin hosting tools even though the physical php.ini is set to 128 MB as recommended. Permissions on the php.ini are set to 440. Even though I can't successfully upload any file, I did try to test these settings. Google Chrome shows me that any file above 8 MB in size only loads up to "x" percent. But if I try a file upload that's smaller than 8 MB, the upload goes all the way to 100 percent. Tried several different files for this. Regardless though, none of the uploads actually work so I suppose that doesn't really matter.

The Tiny_MCE thing has got me totally stumped. What would cause the text functions to work, but not any of the embedded buttons for adding links, images, formatting, etc.?

Does boonex have something available which shows what vServer settings should look like? Where exactly would I find the error logs and can I extract them with filezilla? I do have access to the error logs in my regular CP too. Thanks for your time.

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 This is something to talk to your host about.

Your hosting support department should have told you this, or setup up your vServer from day one to the correct php.ini settings to run the script if the really looked at the requirements for Dolphin from the wiki.

p.s. sent a pm about somethings..

can't join your site because your spam settings are set weird on couple "info" blocks not allowing to get past initial join form.

You said the permissions of the pip.ini file are 440?

As this is a vserver, that you have control of, no php.ini files should be in the dolphin folders. Only one you should have and change is the main php.ini file in the ect folder of the server. I don't use cpanal so i have no information on that. I do all of my server work by hand the old fasion way without any control panals.

Anyhow. The permissions on your php.ini file is wrong. Should be 644 not 440. 644 is the default when the linux operating system is installed and should remain as 644.

Well, I kind'a figured that the permissions were wrong since I never heard of a 440 setting before ... but being as I'm not a Server Admin nor a Dolphin developer I also figured ... what the hell do I know?
Set permissions same as encountered because I had to assume they were correct.

@newton27

You wouldn't happen to be in an Asian or an East block country, would you?

We've had so many spam members from Asia sign up, sometimes as man as half a dozen in one day, that we blocked thousands of IP numbers server wide (email server too) from China, Korea, Russia, and a few others ... since we could never get the Dolphin IP and spam tools to work. Initially we set up IP numbers and domains to ignore from the admin panel, places like 163.com and yeah.net along with many others. That never worked though ...

We're working on the server right now too, to get things corrected. So perhaps that's why you can't use the join form?
Thanks .

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 I'm in Jacksonville FL.. 

got into the site finally.. got 500 error then reloaded and at account page

Okay, I received the confirmation email and I can see a new member added on the homepage. Coincidentally our Hobbies/Interest settings didn't deter spammers either since they ended up doing exactly what you did by copying and pasting blocks of text from somewhere else into those fields. That's why we ended up implementing the server wide IP blocking anti-spam features. Coincidentally, I'm in Florida too, closer to Melbourne though.

The Server admin who helped us with the move to another server just finished making some adjustments followed by restarting the apache server. I'm still waiting on a message though to let me know if everything is ready for testing now ...

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