SCode reinstalled, GD issue solved

During the relocation of this site to Register1's hosting service an issue cropped up with James Seng's MT-Scode. The scodetest.cgi script was failing due to a missing GD.pm. Register1 were very helpful and had GD.pm installed within a couple of hours of my first email. However GD still refused to function - the SCode numbers weren't being drawn. From the http error log:

[Fri May 13 18:46:04 2005] [error] [client 81.151.xxx.xxx] Premature end of script headers: mt-scode.cgi
[Fri May 13 18:46:04 2005] [error] [client 81.151.xxx.xxx] /usr/bin/perl: relocation error: /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1/i386-linux-thread-multi/auto/GD/GD.so: undefined symbol: gdFontGetGiant
[Fri May 13 18:54:38 2005] [error] [client 81.151.xxx.xxx] gd-png: fatal libpng error: Invalid number of colors in palette
[Fri May 13 18:54:38 2005] [error] [client 81.151.xxx.xxx] gd-png error: setjmp returns error condition

After a dead end or two, Aaron & Isaac Goldberg provided the vital clue - it appeared to be a problem with the server's GD installation.

Despite just having spent a fair amount of time on my GD.pm problem, Register1 enthusiastically started investigating the new problem. They weren't running CPanel so the Goldbergs' cleangd advice didn't apply. Nevertheless Register1 solved the problem two days later without any further prompting, and the previously-broken SCode installation suddenly started working. They explained how they fixed it:

We had to downgrade the version of GD from 2.23 to 2.11 and use a pre-compiled Perl-GD rpm available from Redhat as opposed to a self-compiled version.

SCode was the one stumbling block to a complete migration to Register1's servers. With that solved, this site's old address is now officially defunct, and all traffic is being redirected to thoughton.co.uk/digitallife/

Comment
Register1's support has been nothing short of outstanding throughout this episode. Email replies were very quick - often within an hour. On one occasion, having just sent off a half-past-midnight email inquiry, a reply arrived at 1am! A great personal service - I've only been with them for a week but they are looking like the perfect hosts. Highly recommended, and very reasonably priced as well. They are also currently offering a "3 years for the price of 2" deal.

Related entries

Installing MT-Blacklist - 14 November 2004
Spamadelic - 8 October 2004
Installing MT-Captcha (aka SCode) - 14 November 2004
Another Movable Type Captcha - 17 November 2004
Bayesian filtering on Movable Type - 14 November 2004
MT-Captcha report card - 12 December 2004
Server move - 16 May 2005
Movable Type, here I come - 16 May 2004
Trackback spammers try their luck - 2 February 2005

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