An unknown PHP error occured

[Matthew Clark]

Hello,

I'll admit I'm fairly new to the world of linux and could use some help.

I've just installed phpVirtualBox on my Ubuntu Server 18.04 following the tutorial here (https://www.ostechnix.com/install-oracle-virtualbox-ubuntu-16-04-headless-server/).

I got all the way through it with no errors until I tried to log on to the phpVirtualBox web interface. I got this error:

An unknown PHP error occurred. This is most likely a syntax error in config.php in phpVirtualBox's folder. The most common errors are an unclosed quote or a missing semicolon in a configuration item that has been entered (e.g. location, username, or password).

Depending on your PHP configuration, navigating directly to config.php in your web browser may display the PHP error message.

If find that this is not the case, or have no idea what this error message means, please raise the issue at http://sourceforge.net/p/phpvirtualbox/discussion/help/

I've doublechecked and triplechecked the syntax of the config.php file and can't find any errors.

I've searched google for days and can't find a solution that works. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Jonathan Morrall]

Hey

I hade the same issue. You may want to analize your web server logs to find the php error.

Use
sudo tail -f -n 10 /var/log/apache2/error.log

if it is reporting
PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function simplexml_load_string() in /virtualbox/endpoints/lib/language.php:73\nStack trace:\n#0 /virtualbox/endpoints/language.php(15): __vbox_language->__construct()\n#1 {main}\n thrown in /virtualbox/endpoints/lib/language.php on line 73

install php-xml and restart apache2
sudo apt-get install php7.2-xml
sudo service apache2 restart

if needed you may need to change php7.2 to your installed version

you may also need to install soap
sudo apt-get install php7.2-soap

[Smart Guide]