As mentioned yesterday, I had some issues with Movable Type on the new Yahoo! Small Business hosting package. Most of which have now been resolved. The final problem I had was that I was unable to install MT-Blogroll on their server.
The automated upgrade process kept failing. The problem is that the user assigned to the Movable Type database isn’t allowed to make significant changes to the database – in this case, to add tables. Using the administrator and phpMyAdmin, it is possible to manually run the necessary queries, found in the schemas directory of your MT-Blogroll installation.
Unfortunately this isn’t the only part. If you do this, the upgrade will still try and run because there is no record that the installation has succeeded. For that, you need a record inserted in the PluginData table. The problem here is that the process that creates that record doesn’t run until after the queries, which fails. So it will run the upgrade over and over again.
The answer is to comment out the step that actually runs the query (because we’ve already done it manually). If that’s done, then everything else runs as it should and the installation finishes, allowing you to use MT-Blogroll.
First, locate this line in Blogroll.pm:
$dbh->do($stmt) or $app->upgrade_error($dbh->errstr);
Next, comment it out by placing a hash (#) in front:
# $dbh->do($stmt) or $app->upgrade_error($dbh->errstr);
Save the file, then upload it to your Yahoo! account via FTP. Now try and access MT-Blogroll again. You’ll be presented with the installation screen, but this time when you click the button it will complete and you’ll be on your way.
If you have problems with this, or are just uncomfortable doing it yourself, remember that I am a Movable Type Consultant and I’d be happy to help.
Comments
6 responses to “MT-Blogroll and Yahoo! Hosting”
Another way to handle the limited user problem is to create another user with full privileges, then make that the user in mt-config.cgi. I did that, and the upgrade, etc went fine.
It sounds like perhaps you didn’t perform the first part, and run the query on your database to create the table. Make sure you have created the necessary tables.
Hi Chad, that worked great! now i have a new problem: Error: Insertion test failed on SQL error Table ‘blog-mt.mt_blogroll_links’ doesn’t exist … can you help once again please
Josh, that depends. I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the Yahoo File Manager, but it likely has some method for changing things. Otherwise you could use an FTP client to connect, and every one I have ever used has a method for changing the permissions (often right-click – if you are on a Mac, you would control-click). Hope this helps.
Dear Chad, I need your help! I don’t know much about PHP, web design etc. I have uploaded all the files for Blogroll to Yahoo File Manager, everything seems ok except how do I change permission to 755? I am really lost now. Can you please help!
I could kiss you. Thanks so much for that help. I appreciate it tons.