The keyword is capable.

I'm running AATrade on a vanilla Fedora Core 4 (FC4) box, right out of the box, no package changes (although I did apt-get update it). No problems here.

FC4:
Mysql-4.1
php-5.04
apache-2.0.54

Unfortunately, php5 has some downsides.. its slower, and it uses more memory. Similarly, for the fastest/best handling of threads, you'd want apache-1.3, not A2.

But capable of running it without changing packages? You bet.

You can even apt-get install php-gd, and have gd support as well. Its a pretty solid distro for online games, although as I said, if perfect performance is your passion, its not the ideal. (Gentoo fits that bill).

Actually you can run AAT on PHP 5 but at the time we said we hadn't tested it and couldn't guarantee it would work properly.

I did do some testing with AAT 0.21 and Fedora Core 4 with PHP 5 when I started work on ADOdb Lite over a month ago. I found that AAT would work on PHP 5 as long as you upgraded the version of ADOdb that came with it to the latest version. The version of ADOdb that the game comes with does not support PHP 5's reference restrictions for classes.

If you are going to use PHP 5 then you are going to need all of the speed you can get so you should stop using ADOdb after you run the create_universe.php. PHP 5 uses alot more memory and takes a little longer to run the same programs.

You should use the method I detailed for using ADOdb Lite with AAT 0.21.

How to use ADOdb Lite with AAT 0.21

ADOdb Lite is over 300% faster than ADOdb (Benchmarks) (over 30% if you are using a precompiler like eAccelerator) and uses 1/6th of the memory (check my blog for more information). This greatly reduces the load on the server and is desperately needed if your game is moderatly active.

One of the things 0.30 will have is a slightly easier to use install/create universe package. There will nolonger be seperate programs as the installer will be included in the create game system. One of the nice additions is the create game package will try to create the database for you instead of requiring it to be created before you try to install the game. There are a number of similar improvements that will make installing the game easier and the game will be completely compatible with 4.x and 5.x versions of PHP but still require 4.0.6 or higher of MySql.

To which I retreat to my previous statement - I've not recompiled any of the source, I've not replaced the packages, and I have AATrade running without edits.

"Capable", yes. "Officially supported", clearly not.


Smarty doesnt have to be recompiled on php5. You do have to turn off E_STRICT warnings. But then again, E_STRICT is obnoxiously purist - specifically complaining about any feature that you use that is PHP4 backwards compatible when there is a PHP5-only feature available.

Again, thats a huge difference from "capable".

Worst case scenario, you can track down where you are having a problem, and we can work through the nature of the problem, and offer a fix to PJ.. nothing wrong with improving the situation for everyone.

Add to config/config.php (immediately before "Automated config file dump ..."):


That turns off all errors, warnings, everything.

Alternatively, change the setting in your php.ini.


Thats planned for Fedora Core 68. Codename: SnuggleSoft.

One of the other great things is how we are dropping Smarty and including Smarty-Lite in the next version. It doesn't have any of the reference problems as well as being smaller and alot faster than Smarty.

What went wrong? What problems are you having?

We can't help with no information. Its like going to the doctor and saying "I'm broken. Write me a prescription to fix it."

A link to the installed game would be even better, as we could look and see whats going on.

Also, do you have IM?

I'm afraid I am not gonna be much help as I have yet to install Core 4 on any of our servers as of yet. Also I have yet to try it with php 5. From what PJ tells me, if your running PHP 5 you need to install the latest ADODB in the backends folder and replace the current one.

Have you tried viewing the admin log to see if there are any errors popping?

Try this...

Try turning off Safe Mode.

If that doesn't work turn off Register Globals.

If that doesn't work try turning both of them off.

The last thing is are you trying to access the game through a proxy with IE? gZip is enabled and IE returns a blank screen most of the time if you are trying to access a web site through a proxy that has gzip enabled. It's a long standing bug in IE.

Other than those I am stumped as well.