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1 Frequently Asked Questions
2 --------------------------
3
4 This document contains frequently asked questions about OCS, primarily dealing
5 with common technical and support questions. For information about using or
6 interacting with the OCS conference management system, consult the system's
7 built-in help. The README document contains introductory information and
8 installation instructions.
9
10
11 =================
12 General Questions
13 =================
14
15 1) Who can I contact for support?
16
17 A: A support forum for OCS is available at <http://pkp.sfu.ca/support/forum/>.
18 Bugs or feature requests can be reported at <http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/>.
19 Although the forum is the preferred method of contact, email inquiries
20 regarding OCS can be sent to <pkp-support@sfu.ca>.
21
22 Although we will try our best to help you and fix any bugs found in the
23 system, please note that OCS comes with no warranty or guarantee of support.
24
25 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
26
27 2) Can I modify the OCS code?
28
29 A: As OCS is an open source program, you are free to make any code changes that
30 you like. We welcome any code submissions or patches to be posted on the
31 OCS Development Forum at <http://pkp.sfu.ca/support/forum/> if you think
32 your changes may be beneficial to other OCS users.
33
34 Please note that if you plan on redistributing OCS (either in original or
35 a modified form), you must do so according to the terms of the GNU General
36 Public License v2. See docs/COPYING for the complete terms of this license.
37
38
39
40 ===================================
41 Server Configuration and Management
42 ===================================
43
44 1) Will OCS work with PHP as a CGI instead of as an Apache module?
45
46 A: OCS is known to work reasonably well with PHP as a CGI using Apache's
47 mod_actions. Since there are a number of different ways to configure Apache
48 to use the CGI version of PHP (e.g., through FastCGI, etc.), your mileage may
49 vary with other deployments (feedback is welcomed).
50
51 On PHP 4 it may be necessary to add "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1" to the server's
52 php.ini to avoid fatal "No input file specified" errors. This parameter is
53 enabled by default on PHP 5.
54
55 OCS may not function correctly if the base OCS directory is located outside
56 of the virtual host's DocumentRoot directory (e.g., when using mod_alias or
57 mod_userdir). This is due to a bug/feature in the method PHP uses to
58 determine the SCRIPT_NAME environment variable by stripping the DOCUMENT_ROOT
59 from SCRIPT_FILENAME.
60
61 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
62
63 2) Will OCS work correctly in PHP's "safe mode"?
64
65 A: OCS is known to work reasonably well with PHP's safe mode restrictions
66 (including open_basedir) enabled. Testing has not been extensive, so there
67 may be unknown issues, in particular with very restrictive configurations
68 that disable PHP functions relied on by OCS (feedback is welcomed).
69
70 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
71
72 3) How can I create a backup of an OCS site?
73
74 A: It is strongly recommended that an OCS system be periodically backed up to
75 guard against a failure in OCS or the server software or hardware that could
76 result in data loss.
77
78 To properly backup an OCS system, the following should be backed up:
79 - The OCS database, using the tools provided by your DBMS (e.g.,
80 mysqldump for MySQL, pg_dump for PostgreSQL)
81 - The base OCS directory
82 - The non-public files directory (the directory specified by the
83 "files_dir" configuration option), which is typically outside of the base
84 OCS directory.
85
86 This backup procedure can be easily integrated into any automated backup
87 mechanism.
88
89 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
90
91 4) How can I move an existing OCS installation to a different server?
92
93 A: To move an OCS system from one server to another, you will need to:
94
95 - Copy the database data, and import it into the new server (e.g., using the
96 command-line tools provided by the DBMS)
97 - Copy the base OCS directory and non-public files directory
98 - Update config.inc.php with any changed settings for the new server
99 (typically, the base URL, database authentication/access, email, and files
100 settings will differ between servers)
101
102
103
104 =======================
105 Common Technical Issues
106 =======================
107
108 1) When I try to access my OCS site this error message is displayed:
109 "Warning: Smarty error: problem creating directory '/./templates' in
110 ./lib/smarty/Smarty.class.php"
111
112 A: This can occur if a higher level directory has execute permission but not
113 read permission. In these situations, the __FILE__ value in an included file
114 appears to be relative to the location of the including file. This issue can
115 be resolved by ensuring all parent directories are both readable and
116 executable.
117
118 See also this PHP bug report: <http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=16231>.
119
120 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
121
122 2) Uploads of large files fail inexplicably.
123
124 A: This can be caused by certain Apache or PHP settings.
125
126 Apache 2.x has a LimitRequestBody directive that, if set to a low number, can
127 lead to this behaviour. In particular, the default PHP packages for recent
128 versions of Red Hat Linux set LimitRequestBody to 524288 bytes in
129 /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf.
130
131 Low values for the PHP ini settings like post_max_size (default "8M"),
132 upload_max_filesize (default "8M"), and memory_limit (default "8M") can also
133 cause this problem.
134
135 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
136
137 3) Emails sent out by the system are never received.
138
139 A: By default, OCS sends mail through PHP's built-in mail() facility.
140
141 On Windows PHP needs to be configured to send email through a SMTP server
142 (running either on the same machine or on another machine).
143
144 On other platforms such as Linux and Mac OS X, PHP will sent mail using the
145 local sendmail client, so a local MTA such as Sendmail or Postfix must be
146 running and configured to allow outgoing mail.
147
148 See <http://www.php.net/mail> for more details on configuring PHP's mail
149 functionality.
150
151 OCS can also be configured to use an SMTP server as specified in
152 config.inc.php, either with or without authentication.
153
154 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
155
156 4) I am using Apache 2.0.x, and OCS pages fail to load, producing an error
157 like "File does not exist: .../index.php/index/...".
158
159 A: With some versions or configurations of Apache 2.0.x, it may be necessarily
160 to explicitly enable the AcceptPathInfo directive in your Apache
161 configuration file.
162
163 See http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/core.html for more information about
164 this directive.
165
166 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
167
168 5) OCS installation fails with the MySQL error "Client does not support
169 authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL
170 client".
171
172 A: This problem is caused by a change in the MySQL authentication protocol in
173 MySQL 4.1, and can occur if your system is using an older MySQL client
174 library with a newer MySQL server.
175
176 See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Old_client.html for suggested
177 approaches to resolve this issue.
178
179 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
180
181 6) "Warning: ini_set(): A session is active. You cannot change the session
182 module's ini settings at this time" messages appear when I load OCS.
183
184 A: Check if session.auto_start is enabled in your php.ini configuration. OCS
185 requires this setting to be disabled, which is the default behaviour in
186 current versions of PHP.
187
188 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
189
190 7) The installation form loads successfully, but after clicking the button
191 to install, a blank page appears and the database was not created.
192
193 A: This may indicate that your server does not have the selected PHP database
194 module installed and enabled (this can be verified by looking at the output
195 of phpinfo() to see if the required database support exists -- see
196 http://php.net/phpinfo).
197
198 The OCS installer lists database drivers for which the required PHP
199 extension does not appear to be loaded in brackets (e.g., "[MySQL]").
200
201 Most Linux distributions offer a separate package that can be installed for
202 each supported PHP database module -- e.g., php4-mysql or php-mysql (for
203 MySQL support), or php4-pgsql or php-pgsql (for PostgreSQL support).
204
205 Note also that even with the module installed it may be necessary to modify
206 your php.ini configuration to load the module, by adding "extension=mysql.so"
207 or "extension=pgsql.so", for example.
208
209
210
211 ==========================
212 Advanced OCS Configuration
213 ==========================
214
215 1) How can I control the address to which bounced emails will be sent?
216 Why do messages sent with an envelope sender have an 'X-Warning' header?
217
218 A: To control the address to which a bounced emails will be sent, you need to
219 set the envelope sender address. Enable the "allow_envelope_sender" option
220 in the [email] section of the OCS 2.x configuration file; when this option
221 is enabled, a "Bounce Address" field appears on Page 1 of the Conference Setup.
222
223 Note that this option may require changes to the server's mail server
224 configuration so that the user the web server runs as (e.g. "www-data") is
225 trusted by the sendmail program, or an "X-Warning" header will be added to
226 outgoing messages. Consult your mail server's documentation if outgoing mails
227 include such a header.
228
229 For example, Sendmail keeps a list of trusted users in the file
230 "/etc/mail/trusted-users"; other mail systems use similar files.
231 The command-line option used by OCS 2.x to set the envelope sender is "-f".
232
233 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
234
235 2) How can I allow users to search non-text files, such as PDF or Microsoft
236 Word documents?
237
238 A: OCS supports indexing of non-text files via external conversion applications.
239 The "Search Settings" configuration section in config.inc.php can be modified
240 to enable indexing of certain binary file formats by setting a
241 "index[MIME_TYPE]" setting (with the desired file mime-type) to the path of
242 the appropriate external text converter for that file format.
243
244 Note that additional third-party software must be installed to use this
245 feature (such as "pdftotext" for PDF files).
246
247 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
248
249 3) I am changing the URL to my OCS installation. Does OCS need to be
250 reconfigured to be accessible under the new URL?
251
252 A: The only reconfiguration that is required after a change in the site URL is
253 to update the value of the "base_url" configuration setting in
254 config.inc.php.