Problems using MediaTemple as host

[Kenneth Lund]

I'm trying to setup a joomlasite at MediaTemple.

I've insatlled numerous Joomlasites on other servers, but haven't been able to this going for me on MediaTemple Grid Servers, yet.

Can someone here help med?

When using a standard-installation, I get the following error:

Warning: main(../globals.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /nfs/c02/h06/mnt/42592/domains/blincseven.com/html/installation/index.php on line 21

Warning: main(../globals.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /nfs/c02/h06/mnt/42592/domains/blincseven.com/html/installation/index.php on line 21

Fatal error: main() [function.require]: Failed opening required '../globals.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/php-4.4.8-1/share/pear') in /nfs/c02/h06/mnt/42592/domains/blincseven.com/html/installation/index.php on line 21

Their "support"-answer is:

You are going to have issues with Joomla if you install it using the full static file paths. We load balance the (gs) and the path before /42592/ could change without notice. If you have a way to set a dynamic path /domains/blincseven.com/html/installation/index.php you can save yourself the trouble later on down the line.


Can someone here please help me get this installation back on track?

[one7media]

Hi Kenneth,

Did you get this worked out? I'm thinking about moving to Mediatemple but don't know if I should if there are install problems...

[esatterwhite]

has anyone else had this issue and/or found a resolution for it?

I've seen a number of blog/site that have been posted recently that said installing joomla on {MT} gridservice was a breeze...

[one7media]

I actually decided to try it out without finding much more info on it. I canceled a day later. It was a nightmare (for me anyway).

It's a shame too, because it seems like they have a good service, but I don't feel like jumping through hoops for what should be an easy, straight-forward Joomla! install.

[esatterwhite]

what were the hoops and what service did you try?

[one7media]

Don't remember what the errors were exactly, but I searched all over for hacks/fixes to make Joomla play nice with their servers. I certainly don't want to discourage you from trying them out...maybe you'll have better luck that I did, or maybe they've changed some settings to be more compatible with J!. All I know was that I couldn't get anything to install, and I've installed many J! sites.

You're checking them out for a reason - they have a pretty damn good service for the money. If you've got time, try it out. They offer a money back guarantee and mine was refunded no questions asked. Once again, I'd still be with them if I could get anything to install.

One other thing I noticed that might be nit picking is that the control panel was a little slow. It seemed like it was running uphill in a 100mph wind.

I signed up for the $20/month plan - Grid Service

[esatterwhite]

has anyone gotten a joomla installation to go without a hitch on media temple?

[yerg]

Spoke to someone last night, having read this, who is using MT-GS and has 6 sites up and running and I asked if he had any issues as you explain.

He said it was nothing different to any other server he'd installed Joomla on. He's got 3 sites J 1.0.5 and 3 at 1.5.6.

In saying that sorry my comments don't help. Oh and he isn't a tech wiz by any means cos if he'd had a problem he would have called me, and I'm no tech wiz either

[esatterwhite]

Thats strange that some people have no problems and some people just can't get it to work at all.

Do you know if he has the mysql container jazz that MT has with their grid service?

I'm on the bubble between MT and just getting a dedicated server with liquid web.

[yerg]

Just on Skype to him and he has a default GS and is running PHP5, which may be the difference..

In MT you can choose between 4 and 5 on a domain basis

[esatterwhite]

ok, good to know. Maybe i'll give them a go. They are supposed to be installing MySQL 5+ on the gs as well. I would think that should make things a pretty smooth transition. I'll have to wait till they get that running

[yerg]

GS comes with both PHP4 and PHP5 ... you get to choose which one you want on a per domain basis

[elliottreport]

Just wanted to say that the j1.5 install on the media temple grid server host was the smoothest, easiest, and fastest install I've had out of the 16 joomla sites I've installed so far. I read this forum prior to starting and did select the php5 for my domain so that may be the key to a problem free install. If anybody else has issues their 24/7 phone support answers in about 10 seconds (well it was 2:30am when I called) and they were the friendliest and most helpful phone support I've ever gotten from a host and I've used siteground, hostgator, and of course, godaddy. So far for the price these guys are blowing my mind.

[ganar]

I know that this is a late reply , but I just want it to say that we are very happy with the server performance at at mediatemple. Every aspect of Joomla works from the start without having to deal with the horrible problems that I always find with cpanel ( even the ftp layer in J1.5 works ! wow)

Today we had the same problem –white page upon getting to every joomla installation on the MT account– with one of our clients and it seems that they changed the path to our installation from:

Code: Select all

/mnt/gs02/herd05/theaccountnumber

to

Code: Select all

/nfs/c02/h06/mnt/theaccountnumber

this of course broke every installation of joomla of that particular client on that particular account.

Tech support was willing to help but was unable to see what was going wrong. They could not find any change on the account...

Please be aware of this problem, I will speak to MT to see how can this be avoided in the future

[esatterwhite]

Yeah, there is a brief article about something like this in the knowledge base saying the due to the configuration of "the grid" that the path to your server will most undoubtedly change and you will encounter the problem described above. And that the best solution would be to somehow get joomla to use dynamic paths....

To me it seams as if the stability problems of the early grid have been more or less rectified, but the problem ( or not a problem? ) of your host machine in a sense being dynamic will always be a problem as it is the nature of 'the grid'.

I'm very torn with MT at this point. I'm still shopin around for reliable host and mt is the only one to provide that kind of space and bandwidth, and be able to handle moderate to high traffic sites.

[ganar]

Umhu!

I agree with you: I've been shopping around for a long , long time. I wish I could work with MT only. Cpanel gives me the creeps from some time now.

[elliottreport]

Wow, I didn't even think of that issue. When you say broke do you mean broke as in had to reinstall or had to change the file path and then everything worked again? Also I have mainly been using shared hosting with SiteGround for all my Joomla sites with no incident thus far (other than slow page loads) but they give you no SSH access. With MT I noticed it's an option. Is the the file path change something that can only be found and fixed through the shell? If so I guess I need to brush up on my SSH commands. If that is the case would you mind posting the command lines you use to check that path (is that the root path? I'm a total novice with ssh) and/or change it to what it should be? Also MT just added the mySQL grid containers to supply additional resources for sql queries. Has anybody used those and noticed enhanced performance (i.e. faster page loads) as a result? Thanks in advance for any answers.

[yerg]

Not sure what you guys have got but just been asking my Canadian mate who has his sites on MT and his config points to /home/accountnumber/domains/domainname

Looks like your site should be tied to your account number unless you have something different to GS.

[esatterwhite]

Not sure what you guys have got but just been asking my Canadian mate who has his sites on MT and his config points to /home/accountnumber/domains/domainname

Looks like your site should be tied to your account number unless you have something different to GS.

Mt offers 1 click install for certain software they feel is both popular and will successfully run on their GS. They have been asked why not joomla, and they replied that due to the nature of the grid and joomla it was not the best option. Joomla uses a static path to the server that has to be manually changed.

The nature of the grid is ( from my understanding of their reply ) to move the account to different server depending on the current load on that particular server - eliminating the " bad Neighbor " effect. If this were to happen on your account, all of the paths on your joomla install would be broke, as described above, and someone would have to go back and change the path of the server

It may be true, it may not be... MT also says they have 1,000's of servers, where as, it was leaked that they had about 20..so there are 2 sides to every story.

[esatterwhite]

Does anyone have any idea of how the much traffic their 1000 GPUs can handle. I was reading their KB article and was finding it hard to believe they could offer out 1TB of bandwidth with their description of their GPU system.

Anyone had any experience with this?

[ganar]

esatterwhite:You can easily fit a 500.000 pageviews 60.000 visitors joomla site on such plan, provided that you don't include scripts with heavy use of GD2 on it and that you have your cache on.

It works like a charm.


Yerg: your friend in Canada may be on a VPS, wich does not have this problem with dinamic paths. BTW this is the first time in at least 4 months that the path has changed. MT moved us from one grid to another grid, which seems to be a rare event.

[yerg]

ganar no he doesn't

so how does this effect things like any other CMS or blogging software?

[esatterwhite]

I'm not really sure, but MT doesn't seem to want to implement joomla into their 1-click installs, they don't list it on their list of successfully installed software, and they suggest using something other than joomla.

Their may be a different reason. Maybe Joomla is more processor heavy than others and they don't want people bogging down the grid?

[nflgrid]

Can anyone give specifics on how to get Joomla working at MT? I have tried many configurations and it just doesn't want to work. People claim to have it working but nobody tells how they got it working.

At a minimum what files needed to be altered and if you have specifics even better

Thanks

[esatterwhite]

It sounds like using PHP 5 is the key. Otherwise, install it like you normally would ( i'm imagining....)

[yerg]

nflgrid just been in and had a look at the MT-GS system and yeah it's pretty slick.

Downside from my view point is that unlike most cPanel and Plesk interfaces you can't unzip/uncompress a file via the file manager you have to use SSH.

Just chatting to my Canadian mate who said to remember to get all your paths correct
internal-db.sxxxxx.gridserver.com for example. All the paths are there in the server admin.

[nflgrid]

Thanks yes I have lots of sites with MT and also Bluehost. And both make my not yet expired Dreamhost accounts seem like lego blocks. I have found MT to be vastly superior to BH.

The no zip issue really doesn't matter that much. Although the low phpmyadmin file size limit has been a problem on several migrations.

I have tried the internal... path in I suspect the correct location. That is about the only mystery that remains in flux. Can you ask your cohort which exact config path parameters are set using that data? It's also possible these paths are located beyond the configuration file as I have found no other places with path settings.

I'd appreciate the exact config line-item. That information will either confirm me a fool or drive me insane.

Thanks

[yerg]

From Greg's view he said that the two that he stuffed up was

database isn't "local host" like most installs it needs to be something like
var $host = 'internal-db.sxxxx.gridserver.com';

And getting the full path correct in thinkgs like ... something like
/nfs/c02/h02/mnt/24000/domains/xxxx.com/html/

Should not be anything else unless in FTP layer you have same issue

All that is in the server admin from memory ... on the page full of icons

Split your database or use BigDump for biggies.

Hope that helps

[skiier_nate]

Hello,

I found it a bit tricky to run Joomla on their DV 3.5. Lots of tweaking, in fact I had to get PHP running on cgi (suExec) to optimize the file upload features of Joomla. It essentially boiled down to Apache ownership.

Unless you are pro at Apache/Plesk I would say to go another route.
Can't say too much about the GS.

Nate Flint

[nflgrid]

OK. My Joomla MT site is up and running without fault.

After pulling my hair out for 2 weeks on this project I decided to send in a service request.

Media Temple responded quickly and knew what areas to look at. They even went so far as to review my settings to tell me what the problems were. Media Temple rocks.

As I have said I have many sites and because MT is so good (speed and uptime wise) I wanted to move some of my Joomla sites over to them.

Here is the code that matters. MT historically has BLOWN away my other Bluehost and Dreamhost accounts. The access speeds and such make my customers and google happy and unlike DH db errors and BH server downtimes I seldom hit a ditch.

var $log_path = '/home/*******/domains/*********.com/html/logs';
var $tmp_path = '/home/*****/domains/********.com/html/tmp';


var $dbtype = 'mysql';
var $host = 'internal-db.s**********.gridserver.com';
var $user = 'db**********';
var $db = 'db**********_***';
var $dbprefix = '';
var $mailer = 'mail';
var $mailfrom = 'info@*****.com';

var $smtphost = 'internal-db.s**********.gridserver.com';

var $session_handler = 'database';

the only one untested is the smtp setting as I haven't needed it but the rest is tested and works smoothly.