PHPCow Help

Hello all, I'm new to the community, and as such I feel like a leech right now as I'm not offering anything in the way of help to anyone before I am asking for it. However, I'm kind of stuck and I'm hoping someone can help me out.

Brief over-view:
I've been running cow for about 8 months. We had a system crash caused by a power outage that took out several machines. The several included the backups

That said, I needed to re-install. I'm using Ubuntu. (Which is what we were using before). (It's a linux varient, watered down a bit, but useful).

I installed all the packages I needed to pass the test. I installed vsftpd setup the directory, chown'd it to the user I'm plugging into cow.

I created the database in mysql.

I started the install procedure, passed the testing, configured the mysql information.

I configured the ftp information.

it said I successfully setup phpcow. (Whoot!).

I grabbed the link to my license and it doesn't work. (Soap error) There was an attachment with it that said "if this doesn't work, copy these files over your existing installation with binary mode and it will".

I did that.

It still says invalid license contact phpcow. When I try to go to the cowadmin it lets me login, and I see a full bar on the left side with all the correct things, but in the middle... there is nothing (a 404 error). When I refresh it, the middle populates with a login (the left frame is still there).

Anyone have this issue?

I got on with phpcow support butt early in the morning and was told it was not a licensing issue, but more than likely related to either ftp or the database.

That's pretty much all the information I was given. He said he wasn't the server master so he could only support phpcow. I dunno I followed the directions, says invalid license. He says it's not. Any thoughts?

I remember there was a patch for the "soap error" a few months ago...was that patch included with your new install? (Just a shot in the dark there)

You seem pretty knowledgeable about this stuff, so I won't make the normal 'basic' ideas to try. So did you talk with the cow on their forum, ticket, or live chat? Crazy IMHO if you admin says "license error" and they claim it can't be?? Doesn't make sense how they aren't willing to help you fix it!

Well he was willing to go in an "Fix it" via FTP. At the time I had it on the dev server so we both thought I should wait until I set it up on the live one. I'm ready on the live one now, but they aren't online to help More importantly I need to know what this issue is, I should be able to set this up without their help and I can't which means I'm not exactly in a good spot.

Why not post on their forum? Invalid license could be due to wrong HOST Variable being detected ... more of a server setup issue. This is just a wild shot in the dark.

I submitted a ticket, waited 2 days now and was told that I need to submit the ticket through a different mechanism and given a link instead of either getting an answer, or having them re-route the ticket through whatever method they would like and then answering my question.

They seem to have very little respect for the situation.

Wrong host variable? How would I check that out? Are you talking about the hosts file in /etc or perhaps what I setup in the default file in the /etc/apache2/sites-available directory (the virtual host thing I setup)?

Or is there something else I'm not thinking about?

Wow, that is crazy. Truly isn't good customer service to make the customer resubmit a ticket, instead of forwarding i on for you IMHO! So sorry to hear they did that to you! Hopefully they will figure out you problem soon though.

A simple way would be to upload a php file with following
<?echo phpinfo();?>
to your domain where you are getting license error issues and see for the hosts variables there if they are in right direction.

I have seen this error in one scenario on cPanel servers long back:

(1) Create a subdomain from within cpanel
(2) Install and activate your license

http://abcd.yourdomain.tld works
http://www.abcd.yourdomain.tld throws invalid license.
This is more due to internal redirects crap that cpanel does for subdomains setup thru cpanel. Solution to such setup was setup a subdomain as independent cpanel account and then everything works fine.

There could be many reasons some perhaps very peculiar to the way server is setup.