[TYPO3-english] Fwd: Fwd: Re: [Ticket#2013113074000082] Observations from a Typo3 newbie

[Alan Campion]

Hello Everyone,
     The following was originally submitted to info at typo3.org with the 
following response from Peter Kraume. I am therefore forwarding the 
message to the two mailing lists Peter has suggested. Look forward to 
hearing from you.
Regards
Alan


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [Ticket#2013113074000082] Observations from a Typo3 newbie
Date: 	Mon, 2 Dec 2013 08:12:39 +0100
From: 	Peter Kraume via TYPO3 Association <info at typo3.org>
Organisation: 	TYPO3 Association
To: 	alancampion at tiscali.co.uk
CC: 	paul at bac111.co.uk



Dear Alan Campion,

Thank you for your mail, your kind words and your effort to write us in 
detail!

As you might already know, TYPO3 is open source software. Thus everybody 
is encouraged to improve the software. To get your points to a broader 
audience, I'd suggest that you post your mail to our mailinglists. The 
english and the dev list should be suitable:
http://lists.typo3.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/typo3-english
http://lists.typo3.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/typo3-dev

Thx again for your effort!

Best regards,
Peter Kraume

-- 
TYPO3 Association, Sihlbruggstrasse 105, CH-6340 Baar, Switzerland
http://association.typo3.org


11/30/2013 15:25 - Alan Campion wrote:


      Observations from a Typo3 newbie

Firstly I will offer my apologies in advance, as this is probably not 
right entry point for what follows, as I'm still getting my head around 
the documentation.  If you point me in the right direction for future 
reference, that would be appreciated.

I have two machines, an (older) laptop and (newer) desktop running 
openSuSE 12.3 and the reason I'm telling you this will become apparent 
shortly. I successfully installed the typo3 introduction package (6.1.1) 
on my laptop a couple of months again without any apparent problems, and 
had a brief play around before making a start on the template tutorial. 
For this I attempted to install Typo3 (6.1.5) on my desktop. No apparent 
problems until I tried to add a task to the scheduler, when I discovered 
the SQL was broken. After a bit of digging I discovered the typo3 core 
bug #41596, and found that between the (rpm) package mariaDB 
5.5.33-1.16.1.i586 (laptop) and mariaDB 5.5.33-7.2.i586, the usual 
openSuSE updates had added the following line to my /etc/my.cnf file.

  sql_mode=NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION,STRICT_TRANS_TABLES

Setting this to sql_mode = "" in line with laptop version, fixed that 
problem and I was then able to proceed with the template tutorial. That 
is, until that broke, which I presumed was my fault. The problem this 
time prevented me logging in as an admin user. No worries I thought, 
I'll simply do a fresh install of typo3; and in doing so update from 
version 6.1.5 to 6.1.6. Still broke, as was a reinstall of 6.1.5 and 
also 6.1.1. At this point I realised I hadn't broken typo3, something 
else had. So more digging revealed core bug #53682 which lead me to the 
difference in versions of PHP between my laptop (PHP version 5.3.17) and 
desktop (PHP 5.5.6).

Looking at the typo3 download page requirements carefully this time, I 
see a range of versions for PHP and mySQL specified, rather than simply 
minimum versions.  So I was my fault after all, for allowing the PHP 
version on my desktop to go beyond this range, which gets me to the 
point of this memo.

Firstly I suggest the upper limit on the version of mySQL, from my very 
limited experience, probably needs to be tied down more precisely than 
5.5.x, to avoid the first problem I encountered. Likewise, the range of 
versions for both PHP and MySQL, needs to be emphasised, something just 
short of big red letters that scream at you ;-) with the caveat, 
(warning) that versions beyond these upper limits, are untested (by the 
typo3 team) and therefore may not work.

I.e the usual assumption that updates beyond these maximum values, "will 
only make things better" is not necessarily true.

For Typo3/OpenSuSE users this is likely to become more problematic with 
the recent release of openSuSE 13.1. It would be helpful if, for 
example, the release notes in  the download packages included a list or 
link, to known problems between these upper limits and current versions, 
however I appreciate the practical difficulties in maybe doing this.

My reason for looking at Typo3, and persevering thus far, is because I'm 
a member of a small Linux user group (LUG), that is evaluating the 
implications of moving our existing CMS website to another platform. 
While this is a snapshot in time, I think the latter point is still 
worth stressing, if others are not to be put off, by making the same 
(newbie) mistakes as I did.

I hope these observations are of some small help. Despite my initial 
teething problems, I've been impressed so far by the attention to 
detail, and quality of the documentation provided.

My regards to Typo3 team
Alan

email: alancampion at tiscali.co.uk