XF 2.1 Some shenanigans with fresh installation

[Arty]

I haven't been working with XF for a while, but today needed to install XF to fix a problem for old customer. Attempted to do a fresh installation of latest XF 2.1 on development computer.

OSX 10.15.4
Apache 2.4.41
PHP 7.3.11
MariaDB 10.4.13

First attempt:

Installation went well, though I did get "server returned empty response" error once during installation, but reloading page allowed it to continue. After installation there were some weird blank pages and errors that didn't make any sense. Tried to rebuild master data, got bunch of errors.

Some errors from xf_error_log table:

[E_NOTICE] Trying to get property 'statusMessage' of non-object

#0 src/XF/Install/Controller/AbstractController.php(30): XF::handlePhpError(8, '[E_NOTICE] Tryi...', '/Users/slava/Do...', 30, Array)
#1 src/XF/Install/Controller/Upgrade.php(260): XF\Install\Controller\AbstractController->manualJobRunner('index.php?upgra...', 'index.php?upgra...')
#2 src/XF/Mvc/Dispatcher.php(350): XF\Install\Controller\Upgrade->actionRunJob(Object(XF\Mvc\ParameterBag))
#3 src/XF/Mvc/Dispatcher.php(257): XF\Mvc\Dispatcher->dispatchClass('XF:Upgrade', 'RunJob', Object(XF\Mvc\RouteMatch), Object(XF\Install\Controller\Upgrade), NULL)
#4 src/XF/Mvc/Dispatcher.php(113): XF\Mvc\Dispatcher->dispatchFromMatch(Object(XF\Mvc\RouteMatch), Object(XF\Install\Controller\Upgrade), NULL)
#5 src/XF/Mvc/Dispatcher.php(55): XF\Mvc\Dispatcher->dispatchLoop(Object(XF\Mvc\RouteMatch))
#6 src/XF/App.php(2190): XF\Mvc\Dispatcher->run()
#7 src/XF.php(391): XF\App->run()
#8 install/index.php(14): XF::runApp('XF\\Install\\App')
#9 {main}

[E_NOTICE] Trying to get property 'completed' of non-object

#0 src/XF/Install/Controller/AbstractController.php(26): XF::handlePhpError(8, '[E_NOTICE] Tryi...', '/Users/slava/Do...', 26, Array)
#1 src/XF/Install/Controller/Upgrade.php(260): XF\Install\Controller\AbstractController->manualJobRunner('index.php?upgra...', 'index.php?upgra...')
#2 src/XF/Mvc/Dispatcher.php(350): XF\Install\Controller\Upgrade->actionRunJob(Object(XF\Mvc\ParameterBag))
#3 src/XF/Mvc/Dispatcher.php(257): XF\Mvc\Dispatcher->dispatchClass('XF:Upgrade', 'RunJob', Object(XF\Mvc\RouteMatch), Object(XF\Install\Controller\Upgrade), NULL)
#4 src/XF/Mvc/Dispatcher.php(113): XF\Mvc\Dispatcher->dispatchFromMatch(Object(XF\Mvc\RouteMatch), Object(XF\Install\Controller\Upgrade), NULL)
#5 src/XF/Mvc/Dispatcher.php(55): XF\Mvc\Dispatcher->dispatchLoop(Object(XF\Mvc\RouteMatch))
#6 src/XF/App.php(2190): XF\Mvc\Dispatcher->run()
#7 src/XF.php(391): XF\App->run()
#8 install/index.php(14): XF::runApp('XF\\Install\\App')
#9 {main}

I've decided to reinstall XF.

Second attempt

Blank database, files directly from upload package. Getting to installation page, entering all data, installation starts, then after few seconds I get this error:

You cannot proceed unless all XenForo database tables are removed.

In database I see that installer created all tables and few tables do have few entries, so not all of them are empty.

Removed all tables, ran install again, same error.


Third attempt

Downgraded PHP from 7.3 to 7.2.21 (version from php-osx.liip.ch that always worked well with XenForo on my previous development computers), restarted Apache. phpMyAdmin works fine, other PHP websites on dev server work fine, phpinfo reports 7.2.21.

Installer in browser shows blank page.

Attempted to install using php cmd.php xf:install. Installed without issues.

Attempting to open forum in browser - getting blank page. xf_error_log is empty.

Few hours of debugging, reinstalling stuff and messing with Apache and PHP configuration - still can't get XF to work. Any ideas what I could be missing there?

 

[Arty]

Update: renamed install directory, now it works. Doh. However I'm still getting mysterious blank pages.

First error was when viewing forum. Part of stylesheet didn't load, I saw net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE in console, but didn't copy it.

Second error was when uploading attachment (just few kb file, within all possible limits that I might have forgotten to configure):

POST /index.php?attachments/upload&type=post&context[node_id]=2&hash=6ce5af77df88a52c027514ee65e57f78 net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE

Then another css error:

GET /css.php?css=public%3Aattachments.less%2Cpublic%3Aeditor.less%2Cpublic%3Alightbox.less%2Cpublic%3Amessage.less%2Cpublic%3Ashare_controls.less%2Cpublic%3Aextra.less&s=1&l=1&d=1590828051&k=5781e7f3d414fcdd125e77c9ff3216b5dd9260f5 net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE

I thought it could be Apache module messing with it, like "good old" mod_security used to do, but I don't have any suspicious modules loaded:

core mod_so http_core prefork mod_authn_file mod_authn_core mod_authz_host mod_authz_groupfile mod_authz_user mod_authz_core mod_access_compat mod_auth_basic mod_reqtimeout mod_filter mod_mime mod_log_config mod_env mod_headers mod_setenvif mod_version mod_unixd mod_status mod_autoindex mod_dir mod_alias mod_rewrite mod_php7 mod_deflate

Apache error log is empty. xf_error_log is empty.

Has anyone experienced similar issues and has any idea what could be causing it?

 

[Arty]

Fixed.

Issue was caused by Apache 2.4 that was installed using Homebrew. It was causing segfault in some PHP code that XenForo was using.