I spent a good part of the weekend trying to install LimeSurvey and after several failed attempts, and one successful using AWS, I thought I'd ask the good people here what might be going wrong locally.

I'm running a FreeNAS server, and my first attempts were trying to install in a VirtualBox FreeBSD 10.3 VM which I already had running with a FEMP stack that I used for a test WordPress server. Had no issues getting to the installation pages, and connecting to the MYSQL database but then lots of blank screens and after some google I eventually gave up as I suspect the issues were NGINX configuration related and some rewrite conflicts with WordPress.

Created a separate FreeBSD VM and configured another FEMP stack and tried again with similar results although I was starting to suspect it wasn't related to the NGINX configuration. Installation checks all passed, found and updated the database tables but when clicking the Administration button just a blank screen. When accessing from the URL I could enter a username and password but again a blank screen.

To eliminate NGINX I created another FreeBSD VM and configured a FAMP stack but again had almost identical results, which started making me think it was maybe FreeBSD related.

Having almost given up, I thought I'd try creating a AWS instance using a preconfigured Bitnami instance which worked fine and having played around a little made me even more determined to get a local version up and running.

Anyone else running on FreeBSD and what are the common causes for blank screens at the end of the install and login pages? I'm going to try using a CentOS VM, but would much prefer to use FreeBSD given this is what FreeNAS is based on.

Thanks

Well, getting it up and running in CentOS 6.7 was pretty straight forward, other than having to update the installed version of mysql.

Would really like to understand why the same steps aren't working in FreeBSD but at least I have a couple of PHP configuration files to compare.

Any other suggestions greatly appreciated...

Best is :
- What PHP version you set
- Did you activate debug mode

In fact : FreeBsd or not, important thing is PHP version

Thanks for the reply!

Basic differences from a quick compare of info.php:

	FreeBSD (10.3)	CentOS (6.7)
Apache	2.4.23	2.2.15
PHP	5.6.23	5.4.45
mysql	5.6.30	5.5.50

mysql 5.0.11 is the issue for 2.50 version, must try 3.06 but unsure it work.

ANd : www.limesurvey.org/manual/Debug_mode is always a good idea if you have issue

Thought I'd check that again, as I was expecting the FreeBSD installation to be more up-to-date.

The mysql version is actually 5.6.30.

It must work : try with debug

Right, here's what I've done with some more detailed notes:

• Everything configured as above so ran for the first time from https://<IP>/limesurvey
• Installer opens and click through the check settings. All OK with PHP 5.6.23, 128MB, mysql, directories found and writeable, etc.
• Entered databased details and returns to say database exists and click to populate
• Leave optional screen alone and when clicking to complete displays a blank screen

I then checked ../limesurvey/application/config and noticed it hadn't created a config.php file. Copied config-sample-mysql.php to config.php and populated with database details. Also set both debugs at bottom of file to 2.

When I browse to https://<IP>/limesurvey I get a screen with logo and language selection (no debug info)
When I browse to https://<IP>/limesurvey/admin I get a login screen (no debug info) and when I enter default username/password (admin/password) I just get a blank screen (no debug info)

Has something in the installation not completed which means it's not reading the config.php file?

adrianwi wrote: .....

• Leave optional screen alone and when clicking to complete displays a blank screen

....

Issue is here.

Did you have apache/ngynx log ? If yes : look what is the exact error when config.php file must be created.

This is all that in the apache log:

No idea,

Seems it's a server issue : serverfault.com/questions/646333/apache-...ng-php-on-freebsd-10

Firstly, thanks for your help with this! One of the things I love about FreeNAS is the ability to snapshot a dataset, so got everything setup ready for the install and then took a snapshot so I can roll back to start again at the click of a button!!

I've had another look and updated httpd.conf with the additional module settings.

Cleared out https-error.log and restarted the VM (jail)

Checked log before running the install and these were thrown with Apache starting:

Ran the installer and the same 'blank screen' issue at the end of the optional page. When I checked the error log, nothing new added.