PHP Script Error for MySQL reports

[GWUlery]

I'm trying to get the SQL reports system to function, but when I execute the unpacking scripts I get the following error.

Command: tar xzf "D:\inetpub\***\Reports/reports.tar.gz" 2>&1:
'tar' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

As far as I can tell, the lines in the script that deal with unpacking the .tar.gz file are:

$cmd = sprintf("tar xzf %s 2>&1", escapeshellarg($path.'/reports.tar.gz'));

echo '<pre>Command: ', htmlspecialchars($cmd), ": \n";
flush();
passthru($cmd, $retval);
echo '</pre>';

Has anyone else experienced this, or does anyone with PHP knowledge have any idea how to fix it?

[Alan T]

I am far from a php expert, but what that script is trying to do there is take the zipped archive that was uploaded from ootp to your server and extract the file/files from the archive on your server for you so you do not have to do it manually.

The program tar is what the script is using to do so, and is a very very common program that is generally on most systems. Your script is getting an error that it can't find that program on your server.


From there I'm not sure what possible things could cause that, but the obvious ones I would suggest is to check to make sure you do have tar on your server. Make sure that your account has access to it via php.

Beyond that, I'm not sure if there are other php settings that might need to be checked on your server, maybe someone more knowledgeable than I in php can help assist further.

[GWUlery]

Through conversations with my web hosting provider, it turns out the issue is that I am on a shared Windows hosting environment. Tar is not available on Windows without third party software, which isn't available on shared servers.

For the developers, is there any chance that archives could be built in alternate formats such as zip?

For any programmers out there, I can manually zip and extract the needed files. Does anyone know how to edit the PHP file to remove the extraction processes and skip right to the SQL commands?

I'm on a horribly slow Internet connection because of where I live, and this was one of the huge advantages I was looking forward to when moving to OOTP 12.