Minimal requirements check

[Pryx]

We should check (ideally both before install and in administration every time) for minimal requirements - #18 will surely need CURL to work and we should check if mail() function exists and is working. Maybe send testing email with "Welcome" information right after install? I don't think server memory or max script run time will be problem (yet). Also maybe checking write permission before trying to write config file could be nice. If anyone has more ideas what to check, let me know.

[jhuesser]

Maybe it's anoying for a user to get all the mails. So you could test if mail() is present with sending it to a dummy address.

$to      = 'nobody@example.com';
$subject = 'the subject';
$message = 'hello';
if(mail($to, $subject, $message){
   echo "mail() enabled"; //but mail will not be delivered
} else {
  echo "mail() disabled";
}

[Pryx]

I wanted to send email as a second layer of checking - the mail server can be misconfigured and the mail function would still return true, which would be a problem for users who forget their passwords for example 🙂

[jhuesser]

Ah, yeah then it's the best to send a mail to the user.

[petrk94]

If
PHP 5.4 or newer
MYSQL 5.5 or newer
MYSQL user with table creation permissions
Write access to webroot (installer is going to create a config file)

are the requirements, it were not hard (for me) to write a bash script to check this and write the results in a file

[Pryx]

AFAIK this all can also be checked in PHP without any major problems, I just didn't have the time to write the script yet. Now my finals are almost over so I expect to look into it sometime soon 🙂

[petrk94]

@Pryx ah ok, I could write that short script, but if you make it in PHP directly, than it make more sense^^
Just, I cant PHP, but love that this cool software come from my home country and so I follow the developments :)

[thnilsen]

Would something like this do for basic prerequsite checks during installation?

The example checks the following three points:

• PHP version (>=5.4.0)
• If mysqlnd library is installed by checking if one of its unique functions are available.
• If the process has write access to the web folder.

Other checks can be easily added if needed.
Check for dbname,dbuser and dbpass validity would have to be handled differently and after the form has been posted..

I haven't commited the update yet, so the diff to install.php is:
install.php.diff.txt

The end result looks like this

This should fix #35 as well.