Skip to main content

PHP Support Tickets Support

PHP Support Tickets Frequently Asked Questions

For more up to date queries please check out the mail ist, Forum or other support options.

  1. This program is incompatible with PHP version (4.*). Version 5.0.1+ needed
  2. The email will not send out correctly?
  3. What is SMTP?
  4. What is this session_start() error?
  5. Fantastico installation issues.

This program is incompatible with PHP version (4.*). Version 5.0.1+ needed

Version 2.0+ takes advantage of PHP 5’s Object-Oriented features, which are not compatible with any version previous to 5.0.1. If you cannot or do not want to upgrade to PHP 5+, please continue to use version 1.9 of PHP Support Tickets. Please also check the requirements

The email will not send out correctly?

This is directly associated with the SMTP setup within the include/config.php file.

What is SMTP?

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It is used to transfer e-mail between computers. It is a server-to-server protocol. SMTP can be configured in many ways, i.e. some allow relaying, some require SMTP authentication, others require that the email be a domain on the email server. So you need to know a little about how your SMTP server is set up if you wish to use the SMTP method of sending otherwise select Mail which will use the PHP default.

You are asked to fill out the following VARIABLES in include/config.php to allow the application to send through your SMTP server:

  • PHPST_MAIL_SENDMETHOD - select the method that most suits your setup:
    • sendmail for Unix systems.
    • smtp for windows systems.
    • mail or qmail if the above do not work. mail is PHP’s native mailing functions.
  • PHPST_MAIL_SOCKETFROM - This must be a fully validated email that resides on the mail server.
  • PHPST_MAIL_SOCKETFROMNAME - This can be anything, it is just aesthetics for the user who receives the email.
  • PHPST_MAIL_SOCKETHOST - This is vital, this tells the application to look for an SMTP server at this address. Usually this is smtp.yourdomain.com but the zone i.e. smtp can be anything some companies use mail.yourdomain.com etc, your server may be able to use localhost or an IP like 127.0.0.1 so please find this out.
  • PHPST_MAIL_SMTPAUTH can be set on a server, it requires that the user send through a Username and Password to validate the account, this essentially stops spamming companies using your email to send mass email through it. This can be switched on or off (true or false) in this application, please set appropriately.
  • PHPST_MAIL_SMTPAUTHUSER - This will likely be the username of your email account.
  • PHPST_MAIL_SMTPAUTHPASS - This will likely be the password of your email account.
What is this session_start() error?

If you receive the following error, or something similar regarding sessions then read below:

Warning: session_start(): open(/tmp\sess_12345, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in FILE...

This basically means that there is nowhere the PHP can store the USER/Admin session. The session acts similarly to a cookie and saves information regarding the login for future pages.

If you do a manual install of PHP then the PHP.ini file is setup for Linux users by default. So the PATH for PHP to save the session is /tmp. This will not suffice on a windows machine this needs changing to C:\temp or better c:\PHP\sessionsave, make sure the folder exists that you specify. The variable within the php.ini file is called session.save_path = ""

Using the PHP automatic installer on windows will create these folders for you.

Basically understanding the PHP.ini files is the key. If you get this error and you are on a hosting scheme, then I would seriously think about leaving if they can’t setup the PHP.ini file correctly!

Restart your web server after any changes to the PHP.ini file!

Fantastico installation issues.

Some web host providers have an auto-install program (ie: FANTASTICO) which automatically installs a selection of PHP scripts on your server and installs the MySQL tables for the individual programs. If you you are using this method, you may encounter certain problems with phpSupportTickets. Problems I have encountered after installation were:

when viewing a ticket:

Warning: dir(): failed to open dir: No such file or directory in /home/mysite/public_html/support/index.php on line 692

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/mysite/public_html/support/index.php on line 694

These lines appear on the right side of the ticket view. The reason these problems are occuring is because the config.php script is NOT configured properly. You must open up the config.php file and MANUALLY input your information in certain fields, particularly the smtp fields and the upload directory field. Also, you will likely need to set permission for your smtp field to "TRUE" and enter the username and password for the correct email account -- because most servers do require permission for you to send out emails.

Also, do not forget to channel mode (chmod) your "upload" directory to 777 if you wish to accept attachments... as it is still probably set at 755.

These are some problems I have discovered -- so I hope this info is helpful to anyone who used FANTASTICO to install the script on their server.