Setting up Wordpress on a NearlyFreeSpeech hosted server

Question

I'm tearing my hair out with this issue I'm having. I'm doing an install of Wordpress onto my NearlyFreeSpeech web server. I've already set up my MySQL database and such, and it's working just fine. I've set up a user called wpuser and a database called wpuser as well, and given wpuser the proper permissions to create/drop and such.

I've edited my wp-config.php exactly how the NearlyFreeSpeech FAQ lists.

Upon hitting the install button I get errors like this:

WordPress database error: [Can't create/write to file '/var/wordpress/wp_users.MYI' (Errcode: 2)]`

And then the long MySQL query follows. I don't have permissions to access anything other than my public/private folders on the server, so I don't know why Wordpress is trying to seemingly install itself into the var folder, or at least access a folder that's not there.

A little bit of searching suggested that I give Wordpress a temporary directory, which I have done using this code:

if ( !defined('WP_TEMP_DIR') )
    define('WP_TEMP_DIR', dirname(__FILE__) . '/tmp/');

Any suggestions on how I can get this thing to actually install?

---

My wp-config.php:

<?php
/**
 * The base configurations of the WordPress.
 *
 * This file has the following configurations: MySQL settings, Table Prefix,
 * Secret Keys, WordPress Language, and ABSPATH. You can find more information
 * by visiting {@link http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php Editing
 * wp-config.php} Codex page. You can get the MySQL settings from your web host.
 *
 * This file is used by the wp-config.php creation script during the
 * installation. You don't have to use the web site, you can just copy this file
 * to "wp-config.php" and fill in the values.
 *
 * @package WordPress
 */

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'wpuser');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'wpuser');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', "passwordhere");

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'nescience.db');

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
define('DB_COLLATE', '');



if ( !defined('WP_TEMP_DIR') )
    define('WP_TEMP_DIR', dirname(__FILE__) . '/tmp/');





/**#@+
 * Authentication Unique Keys and Salts.
 *
 * Change these to different unique phrases!
 * You can generate these using the {@link https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ WordPress.org secret-key service}
 * You can change these at any point in time to invalidate all existing cookies. This will force all users to have to log in again.
 *
 * @since 2.6.0
 */
define('AUTH_KEY',         'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY',  'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY',    'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_KEY',        'put your unique phrase here');
define('AUTH_SALT',        'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT',   'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_SALT',       'put your unique phrase here');

/**#@-*/

/**
 * WordPress Database Table prefix.
 *
 * You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique
 * prefix. Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!
 */
$table_prefix  = 'wp_';

/**
 * WordPress Localized Language, defaults to English.
 *
 * Change this to localize WordPress. A corresponding MO file for the chosen
 * language must be installed to wp-content/languages. For example, install
 * de_DE.mo to wp-content/languages and set WPLANG to 'de_DE' to enable German
 * language support.
 */
define('WPLANG', '');

/**
 * For developers: WordPress debugging mode.
 *
 * Change this to true to enable the display of notices during development.
 * It is strongly recommended that plugin and theme developers use WP_DEBUG
 * in their development environments.
 */
define('WP_DEBUG', false);

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

/** Absolute path to the WordPress directory. */
if ( !defined('ABSPATH') )
    define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__) . '/');

/** Sets up WordPress vars and included files. */
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');

Answer 1

I know this is old but I thought it would be helpful to answer. I followed this advice, and it worked fine:

https://members.nearlyfreespeech.net/YOURMEMBERNAME/support/wordpress

Also see this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/18e5n9/anyone_use_nearlyfreespeech_as_a_webdev_babynoob/

Summary:

touch .htaccess
chgrp web .htaccess
chmod 664 .htaccess
chgrp -R web *
find . -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
find . -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;

Your wp-config.php file looks fine. Your database name looks correct.

Did you use wp-cli to download wordpress? That's what I did and it worked well.

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar    
php wp-cli.phar core download

And then i invoked this:

http://MYSITENAME.nfshost.com/wp-admin/install.php

and it all worked.

Answer 2

nescience.db is not the address of the database server. It doesn't resolve.The URL of your database is located at the top of PHP My Admin.

---

Edit:

Some hosting companies install the MySql on the same instance as Apache. Its worth a shot to try localhost.

/** MySQL hostname */
define( 'DB_HOST', 'localhost' );

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EDIT

Correction: nescience.db is probably the right name for the MySQL Server. On NearlyFreeSpeech, this is how they name their databases.

Answer 3

This is really about the names used for database things in WordPress and NFS.

in phpMyAdmin on your site... at the top of the page look for... Server: name1.db »Database: name2

define('DB_NAME', name2'); define('DB_HOST', 'name1.db'); The username and password are for the user you made for this MYSQL site. Hope this helps