Blank screen instead of installation page

Software Support
1

Hello,

my name is Aleksandar and I am currently at the position of a Technical Editor of the Electronics Journal published by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Banja Luka.

We would like to upgrade our journal by migrating to OJS.

I am trying to run a local version (for now) of the OJS. The OS is Linux Mint 18 and I installed a Lamp Server, which includes Apache, PHP and MySQL - all versions are satisfying OJS 3.0.2 requirements.

However, after unarchiving ojs.3.0.2.tar.gz to:

/var/www/html/ojs

I am not able to access the installation page. Namely, I only get a blank white page in my browser when I try to go for:

localhost/ojs/

The permissions are set as advised in the ojs/docs/README file.

Both Apache and MySQL services have been restarted. In the moment of desperation I even restarted the machine - to no effect, unfortunately.

Kindly provide any idea what might be causing such behaviour.

Thank you,
Aleksandar

2

Hi @apaj,

Have you checked your PHP error log?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

Hello @asmecher,

thanks for your time.

Unfortunately, not much experienced in this domain - last time I did a website I started typing <html... within a vim-opened plain-text file.

Could you please tell me which file exactly should I take a look at?

Regards,
Aleksandar

4

Hi @apaj

On Linux, either /var/log/httpd/error_log or /var/log/apache2/error.log. It depends your Linux distro.
And these files are owned by root, so you need to be root or use sudo to see it, or read it.

Example command:
$ sudo vi /var/log/httpd/error_log

or root:
# vi /var/log/httpd/error_log

Hope it helps
Israel

5

Hi @israel.cefrin

thanks a lot - the distro is Mint 18.

I’ll get in there as soon as possible and see if I can make anything out of what I find in there - but most probably I’ll have to come back here :slight_smile:

Regards,
Aleksandar

6

I use Mint17, and log folder is /var/log/apache2/, I think it is the same path.

Israel

7

hello israel.cefrin, i have the same problem but with a mac, how can i see the php error log?
thank you