Cannot login to 5.0.5 on Ubuntu 18.04 running VirtualBox 5.2

[elderpro]

I'm trying to get an idea why phpVirtualBox logins always fail after upgrading to Ubuntu Server 18.04, VirtualBox 5.2.12r122591, Extension Pack 5.2.12, and phpVirtualBox 5.0.5.

VirtualBox seems to be running as expected on the server, but any phpVirtualBox logins are met with dialog "An unknown PHP error occurred. This is most likely a syntax error…".

I've worked with a couple of pristine config.php-example files changing only my username and password to that of the server host to create a config.php.

What am I missing? Is this truly a config.php problem with syntax or is it something else? Nothing seems amiss in vboxwebsrv.log or VBoxSVC.log

vboxautostart-service.service         loaded    active   exited
vboxballoonctrl-service.service       loaded    active   exited
vboxdrv.service                       loaded    active   exited
vboxweb-service.service               loaded    active   running
vgauth.service                        loaded    inactive dead
virtualbox.service                    loaded    active   exited

$ lsof -i -n | grep vboxweb
(returns…)
vboxwebsr 1515 dlfuller    9u  IPv4  25701      0t0  TCP 127.0.0.1:18083 (LISTEN)

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Thomas]

Hi,

Please note that this site is not monitored by phpvirtualbox developers. Please report all issues to Github here: https://github.com/phpvirtualbox/phpvirtualbox/issues

[elderpro]

I posted the same at Github, but the satisfactory end result might also be helpful here.

These are my steps in getting phpVirtualBox 5.2 working on PHP 7.2 and Ubuntu Server 18.04 in case they might help others.

First, I followed steps from an excellent how-to with two notable exceptions. One is changing all 7.1 references there to 7.2. The other is getting the newer phpvirtualbox 5.2 from a different source.

$ cd /tmp && wget https://github.com/phpvirtualbox/phpvirtualbox/archive/5.2-0.zip
$ unzip 5.2-0.zip
$ sudo mv phpvirtualbox-5.2-0 /var/www/html/phpvirtualbox

I purged all old my installed php packages php, php7.0, php7.1, php7.2 and then did an autoclean.

During my apt-get update the "…public key is not available…" problem for the Ondřej Surý repository problem was resolved by entering this single-command solution:

$ sudo apt-get update 2>&1 |
sed -ne 's?^.*NO_PUBKEY ??p' |
xargs -r -- sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys

Next was installing php-7.2-fpm and related modules by modifying this command from the how-to by changing all 7.1s to 7.2s:

$ sudo apt-get install php7.2-fpm libapache2-mod-php7.2 php7.2-mcrypt php7.2-cli php7.2-xml php7.2-zip php7.2-mysql php7.2-gd php7.2-imagick php7.2-recode php7.2-tidy php7.2-xmlrpc

And making a minor change in the Apache2 configuration file and creating a test PHP file:

$ sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini
(…change one line)
date.timezone = America/New York
$ sudo nano /var/www/html/phpinfo.php
(…add one line)
<?php phpinfo( ); ?>

Finally I restarted the Apache2 and PHP services, and went to http://(my local domain)/phpinfo.php and http://(my local domain)/phpvirtuablbox.php for results with everything working.