The Joomla 3.0 content management system was developed to work well on Web servers running LAMP or Windows and IIS. Nevertheless, you may end up with a failed or under-performing Joomla installation due to differences in Linux distributions, Web-server software versions and hardware configurations.
This information describes common problem scenarios and ways to get help if you encounter a problem during Joomla 3.0 installation. I am very pleased to see a change in the order of installation screens compared to the beta version of Joomla, because in stable version of Joomla 3.0 “Pre-Installation Check” is currently activated as first not only last.
Server Software Versions
You may have problems installing the latest version of Joomla (Joomla 3), it has higher requirements than had the previous version, it needs a more recent version of the PHP interpreter or mySQL database management system. Apache web server is strongly recommended. Also, you must have at least PHP 5.3.1 and MySQL 5.1 or PostgreSQL 8.3.18 installed. Even if your Web host offers an older, tried and true version of PHP and MySQL by default, it may allow you use a newer version by changing your server configuration or by adding an “.htaccess” file directive.
Magic Quotes GPC
If yours pre-installer will not let you proceed because Magic Quotes GPC is set to on you have to turn in off. Magic quotes may be enabled or disabled in the php.ini file simply by changing the value of the magic_quotes_gpc from On to Off, or Off to On. Simply create a php.ini file with the following code: magic_quotes_gpc = Off or magic_quotes_gpc = 0. If you do not have access to the php.ini file, inquire with the System administrator for your host and ask about having Magic quotes turned off.
How to disable the safe mode
The PHP safe mode is an attempt to solve the shared-server security problem. It is very simple to disable safe mode on the entire server. All you need to do is just edit the php.ini file and add safe_mode = Off or safe_mode = 0.This feature has been deprecated as of PHP 5.3.0 and removed as of PHP 5.4.0. You can try also find the .htaccess file under public_html folder and insert this line into your .htaccess file: php_admin_flag safe_mode Off or php_admin_value safe_mode 0. There are several Apache directives that allow you to change the PHP configuration from within the Apache configuration file itself.
How to disable Output Buffering
Output buffering is a mechanism for controlling how much output data (excluding headers and cookies) PHP should keep internally before pushing that data to the client. Edit your php.ini file and add output_buffering : output_buffering = 4096 or output_buffering = Off. You can try also with your .htaccess file adding: php_value output_buffering Off
Failed to connect to your MySQL database server
The installation script cannot connect to the database. Check if the username, password and hostname that you provided are correct.
Cannot write to configuration to configuration.php
The installation script needs permissions to write to the configuration files configuration.php. Sometimes, a Linux Joomla installation session fails because the installer application does not have permission to create or modify files.
500 Internal Server Error error
An “Internal Server Error” is an error on the web server that you’re trying to access. That server is misconfigured in some way that is preventing it from responding properly to what you’re asking for. This error often occurs on:
- Misconfigured web server file or folder read and write permissions – check your php.ini and .htaccess files.
- Corrupted file(s).