Re: Red Hat 6.0 + MV3.14 + Virtuald run/install probs

[Frank Miedreich <miedreich@acm.org>]

>******    message to minivend-users from Marius Schaefer
><maillist@b-p-a.com>     ******
>
>Hi all,
>
>I want to set up Minivend on a RH-System and always get the "No
>response, We are sorry..." message. I already have installed MV on other
>systems (Suse, FreeBSD) sucessfully.
>
>This is what I have (done):
>
>Red Hat 6.0
>perl5 (5.0 patchlevel 5 subversion 3)
>MV 3.14
>Apache (1.3.6) with inetd and virtuald so that the apache is startet in
>inetd-mode with a "chroot /usr/home/<user>"
>
>After installing MV with
>% /usr/home/<user>/usr/local/bin/perl Makefile.PL
>% make test
>% make install
>
>Everything works fine, no errors. Then I changed
>
>~/mvend/src/config.h line 38 to
>#define LINK_FILE      "/mvend/etc/socket"
>
>and
>
>~/mvend/src/vlink.pl line 26 to
>my $LINK_FILE    = '/mvend/etc/socket';
>
>Also the makecat works fine (all path with /usr/home/<user> at the
>beginning).
>
>Minivend is starting withour errormessage (in INET and UNIX Mode).
>
>Now I try to access the page, without the response. No error.log. I also
>changed the file-mode to 777 of ALL files and directorys (~/catalogs,
>~/mvend, ~/www/htdocs/simple, ~/www/cgi-bin). Perl and Apache are
>working. I searched the faqs and the mailinglist, but didn&#180;t find
>anything helpfull.
>
>Maybe someone knows what to do?
>
>Thank you.
>Marius
>

I cant't make promises, but I'll try a few suggestions:

(I assume your minivend user is called <user>)

A possible cause for your initial problem may have been that the minivend
cgi was not owned by user <user>. AFAIK the cgi will not communicate with a
daemon owned by somebody else. While incorrect file permissions have been a
common cause for problems for many people, blanketing whole directory
structures with 777 is not a solution. This way you create a security
breach in your system comparable to posting the root password on a
web-site. Remember that ~mvend contains code set up to be executed, and you
set world write permissions for that.

Make sure the minivend daemon process is actually owned by <user>, make
sure the mvend tree is owned by <user>, and make sure the minivend cgi for
the shop is owned by <user>. Then change the permissions of the cgi to
4755. Changing the cgi itself to 777 is a sure way to prevent minivend from
working.

In my experience the most common cause that a fresh minivend installation
seems to work but gives no access to catalogs is incorrect access paths or
changes in the minivend location or directory structure after installation.
Regarding your changes to LINK_FILE, why, and are you sure you want /mvend,
not ~mvend ?

cheers, Frank

--
Frank Miedreich
Max-Planck-Institut fuer psychologische  Forschung
Leopoldstr. 24   80802 Muenchen   +49 89 38602-237