Virtualmin - Install Scripts appear broken "out of the box" (Wordpress, phpMyAdmin)

Virtualmin
1

I would love to hear from someone who has recently used the Install Scripts for Wordpress. I have not been able to make it work “out of the box.” (I can work around the problem by downloading its installer from the Wordpress site and using their process.)

But I would love to be able to take advantage of the Virtualmin “Install Scripts” facility. Someone took some time to add this option to “Install Scripts”, and it would be nice to be able to use the fruits of their labor.

The Story: I’m using Virtualmin 6.03 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. I create a new Virtual Server, then choose Install Scripts to install Wordpress.

The installation fails with the message: “PHP module mysql is required … could not find global php.ini file” There’s lots more information in this topic https://www.virtualmin.com/node/57041

There’s a similar report for phpMyAdmin at: https://www.virtualmin.com/node/57305 with the same error message. There are scattered other reports in the forum from people who see this error message.

My Question: Has anyone successfully installed Wordpress from the Install Scripts? Any tips for getting this to work? Thanks.

PS Virtualmin is a magnificent piece of work. It saves me a ton of time. I am deeply appreciative of the effort that has gone into providing a pleasant view on all the aspects of administering a web server. I’m just hoping to find a solution to this problem that would make Virtualmin even better. Thanks!

2

Howdy,

Hmm, WordPress and phpMyAdmin are two of the more popular Install Scripts. Those should definitely work out of the box!

What PHP Execution Mode is your domain set to use (in Server Configuration -> Website Options)?

And what PHP version is it using (in Server Configuration -> PHP Versions)?

-Eric

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PHP Execution Mode: mod_php
PHP Version: I get “This virtual server is using the mod_php or FPM execution mode for PHP, such does not allow per-directory version selection.” see image below

Here’s the Website Options page (as an image, showing php 7.0.30) https://imgur.com/P1KwgtU

Thanks!

4

Hmm, do you have any better luck using CGI rather than mod_php?

Where possible, we’d suggest something other than mod_php anyhow… though if that’s what you’re seeing by default on Ubuntu 18.04, we might need to look deeper into that and figure out why that is.

-Eric

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Is that all the installed modules for your php 7.0? How did you install it? Seems like you are missing a lot of required modules to run these apps.

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Thanks for your thoughts. A couple comments:

  • This is Ubuntu 14.04, not 18.04
  • php -m shows the following, which is almost identical to the image linked above:
richb@netperf-sea:~$ php -m [PHP Modules] calendar Core ctype date exif fileinfo filter ftp gettext hash iconv json libxml mysqli mysqlnd openssl pcntl pcre PDO pdo_mysql Phar posix readline Reflection session shmop sockets SPL standard sysvmsg sysvsem sysvshm tokenizer Zend OPcache zlib

[Zend Modules]
Zend OPcache
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One more thought:

  1. I did try the CGI option, but got “Failed to save website options : The CGI wrapper option cannot be selected unless Run CGI scripts as domain owner is selected”

  2. I checked the “Run CGI scripts as domain owner”, and got “Failed to save website options : The Run CGI scripts as domain owner option cannot be enabled unless the Apache mod_suexec module is installed”

This feels like it’s getting way out of hand (especially since I easily install wordpress by downloading the installer and using the 5-minute install process.) From @andreychek’s comment (“this ought to work”), I figure it might be helpful to explain how the server got to be this way:

  • I provisioned the VPS years ago. I believe it started life as Centos 6, but it’s now running Ubuntu 14.04.5.
  • I installed Webmin a long time ago, and upgraded it from time to time.
  • I learned about Virtualmin recently, and the first install was version 6.03
  • I don’t have good notes about how I installed php 7.0
  • I’m now running into problems creating a virtual server and trying to use Install Scripts.

What other info could I provide? Thanks.