This is strange. I have PHP Express installed locally and on a public server. It worked fine until maybe a few weeks ago. Suddenly, the same encoded files that's still working locally, are not working on the server.

My webhosting company has ensured me that PHP Express is loaded on the server, and I can verify this using phpinfo(), but when I try to view any of the encoded files I get the reply that PHP Express is not loaded. ??

First they told me that they had forgotten to update certain config files so the php.ini directive to load php express was erased during a server update. Now that they've included the directive again the encoded files still won't load.

I have PHP 5.2 on the server with PHP Express 1.4. I have the exact same setup locally. The difference is that on the server it's linux and locally it's windows (WAMP to be exact).

Any ideas?

It may happen only if it is indeed not loaded.
Please double check your configuration with phpexpress() and phpinfo() functions called from a script located in the same directory and invoked through the same host and path in the URL where you got the error.

phpinfo and phpexpress reports that the extension is loaded. My web hosting company suggested that maybe the files are corrupted when uploaded to the server, so I uploaded both in binary and text transfer mode, but still not working on the server. Further, I transferred the files back to my local machine and again they work locally.

I don't know if this helps in troubleshooting, but here's the info reported from phpexpress():

System:
Linux dedi95 2.6.24.2-grsec #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 08:22:51 CET 2008 i686
Shared memory:
sysvipc/sysvipc
PHP version:
5.2.6
Debug build:
no
Thread safety:
disabled
Server API:
CGI/FastCGI
Server software:
Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a mod_fastcgi/FSDATA-1.1 mod_jk/1.1.0
Embperl/2.0b8 mod_perl/1.29 PHP/4.4.3 mod_ssl/2.8.28 OpenSSL/0.9.8b
Shared memory ID:
/tmp/phpexpress_1.4.2_shm.cgi-fcgi.5.2.6-10378
Shared memory accessible:
Yes
Cache owner:
10378

Isn't this the problem?



should probably be 2.0 by now right?

Randy

Maybe that's a good idea in any case, but I've used 1.4 locally all this time and it's worked without a glitch. Also, I'm still using Nu-coder 1.4, so I'll have to upgrade that one as well. As it is right now, I'm seriously thinking about either changing hosting company or encoder solution. Why would the exact same scripts work locally and not on the server when the exact same version of PHP and PHP Express is installed both locally and on the server? That's just crazy.

Either the server installation is corrupted somehow even though it claims to be loading properly, or there's a serious bug somewhere in PHP Express. Damned if I know which it is, but I'll have to decide soon what to do because a deadline is closing in faster than a married man on the way to a hooters bar.

They are supposed to work and work fine in many cases.
Please contact support if you can't solve the problem and provide phpinfo output from the server.
Also, please create a sample of phpoinfo call or something like this, encode and upload it to the server as you do and download it back (encoded), zip and also submit to support team (together with original source).
They may want to see your project settings too.

We changed hosting company, and now it works like a charm. I'm not sure, but I've noticed that at the beginning of encoded scripts, there's
an unencoded script calling extension_loaded to check if PHP Express is loaded. What if extension_loaded had been disabled in php.ini? Then
what?

I don't really have time to test this, dare I say hypothesis? of mine, but I thought maybe someone at nusphere might want to look into it.
Could also be that our old hosting company just did something that messed everything up and none of us could figure it out. In any event,
we're happy now that it's working for us so I just want to round up with a thanks for trying to help. It was a strange problem indeed.