Plesk and PHP - what gives?

[[deleted]]

Hi,

I just ordered one of these "virtual dedicated servers" which included "plesk" as a web based control panel.

I tried to upload a web site that worked with no changes on two other hosts. Unfortunately, the site doesn't work on the new plesk box.

I'm sure this is obvious to most of you, but, my variables appear to be available in HTTP_GET_VARS, but NOT outside the array. So, if I say,

echo HTTP_GET_VARS["submit"]

It prints "submit", but, if I say

echo "submit = $submit";

it prints "submit = ";

Furthermore,

if ( !$submit ) {
echo ("there was no submission!"); // it thinks there's no submission
}

however, right after that, if I do

while ( list( $name, $value ) = each( $HTTP_GET_VARS ) ) {
echo("$name=$value<br>\n");
} //end while

it will reply with
submit = submit

I am NOT inside any functions - so this is not a question of scope.
What gives?

[mtmosier]

Sounds like register globals is disabled.

[[deleted]]

Thank you, you were absolutely correct.

An additional twist was that there were two php.ini files, and I had to change both of them.

There was the standard one at /etc/php.ini, but apparently plesk has its own at /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/php.ini

Thanks again.

[pwicks]

Are you certain you want register_globals on?

It's nice to have your own variables follow you around, but it's a little bit of security risk.

Using the 'track variables', such as HTTP_GET_VARS or HTTP_POST_VARS, would requre some extra work, but it would prevent people from over-writing your variables maliciously.

Do you have a variable called $lastName? $name? lname? $last_name? $db? $fp? $x? $i? If I haven't just guessed one of your variables, then maybe it's not a particular threat.

Your hosting provider's php.ini set register_globals off by choice, not oversight.

There's no "right" answer, here. You might want to google the subject and see what others think about this.