#331 add a "sanity check" for new sites

[Daniel Kionka]

There are a number of common problems that new users
have when setting up their site. We could track down
many of these problems if we had a simple program for
checking new sites. This issue was discussed here:

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?
thread_id=1123695&forum_id=185166

We would need a driver on a stable site, like the PGV
page on SF.net, that would talk to a simple .php file on
the new site. The user would have to type in his URL on
the driver page. It would try the URL and see if PHP is
running, so there would be several checks before even
getting to the test program. The test program would
print more info, being careful not to add vulnerabilities in
the process. We may need a set of programs because it
could fail if it tries testing everything at once, and then
you get no info at all.

There was another user problem after the thread above
that said, "Make sure your Index "FOLDER" had
permissions set....not just the file inside. This was a
confusion for me and gave me the same problems."
Maybe the test program could try creating a dummy file.

[Daniel Kionka]

Logged In: YES
user_id=325184

Another thing to check: Today there were 2 problems with
missing files:

https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=2803098
https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=2803041

Maybe the installation could include a manifest, and the
sanity check could see if any files are missing.

[Daniel Kionka]

Logged In: YES
user_id=325184

Besides missing files, there seems to be a common problem
with corrupt files. Besides a manifest, we need a list of
check-sums that it can check. That will fail if you update
files from CVS, but these are usually new users who take the
official release.