typo in lib/config-defaults.php

[Scott Korvek]

I found a config file error (wrong case on the error log.. CFG-> vs cfg->) which was copied over from lib/config-defaults.php -- so that's a minor typo in your lib/config-defaults.php file with big consequences; and thus another easy-to-fix bug.

Forum post with complete details: http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=3110#post13442

[François Marier (fmarier)]

Thanks for that, fixed!

[Richard Mansfield (richard-mansfield)]

This wasn't a typo actually, it's there for a reason. config-defaults.php resets $cfg at the top, so $cfg->dataroot is undefined in the place where it sets that log_file property; $CFG on the other hand is a global defined in init.php, so $CFG->dataroot is available.

I think this problem occurred because config-defaults.php got copied, but as I think it says somewhere in the docs, you shouldn't be copying config-defaults.php to create your config.php, you should copy config-dist.php instead.

[François Marier (fmarier)]

Oops. Commit reverted on master.

[Scott Korvek (sjk6574)]

So what should my config.php be? With it set CFG, I get errors until I change it to cfg. I didn't copy config-defaults.php, I copied the one line from config-defaults that sets that directive, since it isn't in cfg-dist.php and I needed the logging to troubleshoot the original error.

[Richard Mansfield (richard-mansfield)]

Scott,

Yeah I had another look and you're absolutely right, there are some *serious* problems with these files.

I'm wondering, were you talking about the $cfg->log_file line or the $cfg->emaillog line? Because it seems to me that there *is* a typo for $cfg->emaillog in config-defaults.php and that it should probably say

// $cfg->emaillog = $CFG->dataroot . '/log/email.log';

But anyway, config-defaults clearly says at the top "If you see a setting in here you'd like to change, copy it to your
config.php and change it there", which is a lie in the case of the $cfg->log_file line as you discovered, because $CFG->dataroot is going to be undefined inside config.php.

Maybe that comment should be removed, and all the commented-out stuff in config-defaults should instead go into config-dist.

Or maybe we could just add in a hacky comment above the $cfg->log_file line to say you need to change $CFG to $cfg if you're moving it into config.php.

In your case I guess if you're just wanting to change $cfg->log_file in config.php you need to reference $cfg->dataroot and obviously put it below the line where you set $cfg->dataroot. (I'm not familiar with $cfg->log_file and LOG_TARGET_FILE, I've always just let it all go to the apache log).

[Ruslan Kabalin (rkabalin)]

As an option, we may ask people to use full path in $cfg->emaillog since it is not the option that often used. And if it is in use, the most reasonable place for mahara logs should be /var/log/mahara rather than data directory I think (users should care about correct permissions for www-data user of course). So, having that $CFG->dataroot in the path by default does not make much sense apart of the presumption that it should work out of box without file-system permissions changes.