General Troubleshooting Starter

If you're getting errors while running FogBugz setup, something about your system is not configured the way it needs to be for Setup to continue. This guide is also intended for people whose previously healthy FogBugz is no longer working. To pinpoint the problem, some general troubleshooting steps are helpful.

Run phpinfo()

Save this file called phpinfo.php to your server and put it where it can be served up by Apache. (On OS X this is simply the Sites folder.) This sample file simply prints the results of phpinfo(). From the PHP docs on php.net: "Because every system is setup differently, phpinfo() is commonly used to check configuration settings and for available predefined variables on a given system. Also, phpinfo() is a valuable debugging tool as it contains all EGPCS (Environment, GET, POST, Cookie, Server) data."

View phpinfo.php in a browser. Please take a moment to look for the following information:  

System: Make sure your system meets the requirements.

Configure Command:

  • Make sure you do not see this:
    --disable-sessions
    Note: SuSE 9.1 and later disables sessions by default!
  • Some things you do want to see:
    --with-iconv
    --with-curl
    --enable-trans-sid
    --with-pear
    --with-imap
    --with-mysql

  • Make sure save_handler is enabled.

Configuration File (php.ini) Path: Write this down. You may need to modify your php.ini file.

PHP Core directives: Some directives to take note of:

  • file_uploads
  • include_path
    Navigate to the directory specified by your include_path. You need to have the following files present there:
    /Mail/mimeDecode.php
    /XML/Tree.php
    /Auth/Auth.php
    /Auth/SASL.php
  • magic_quotes_gpc, magic_quotes_runtime, magic_quotes_sybase

Session directives: If you do not see a section labeled Session, your PHP may have been configured to not allow PHP sessions, which will have to be rectified to use just about any PHP application. Here are some name values pairs to check:

  • session.use_cookies should be set to On
    OR
  • session.use_trans_sid should be set to 1

Some more sections you should see: Curl, fogutil, imap, mysql.


    If anything you see does not fit the above descriptions, it will need to be investigated.

    Two PHP or not two PHP? That is the question.

    It's possible you have two different PHP installations, so run the following command from the command line:

     php -i | grep php.ini

    If you get a different file path to php.ini here than you see when you run phpinfo.php, then you have a different PHP installation installed for the command line interface than you do for Apache.

    If after reviewing the support articles you have questions for Fog Creek Support, please send an email to us and include the complete output of phpinfo in your email or as an attachment.