PTS FAQ ($Id: faq,v 1.1 1997/12/31 09:39:23 nick Exp nick $) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Huuh? There's a 'Muuh' on my screen?! A: These are debugging marks which have been forgotten :-) Just comment them out. nk, 97-12-31 Q: What do the various fields in the 'people' table mean? A: Group This field is currently being used to allow projects to be assigned by 'group', so projects can be viewed for several users, not just by 'anyone' or an individual. Company PTS was originally designed to handle tasks for several large workgroups. The Company field was to seperate out the various companies using the system. It's currently unused. Tech This field is also currently unused, but will be used with the upcoming ticketing system to mark a user as available to receive tasks from a generic pool. Level The user level has 3 settings recognized right now. < 10 is a standard user that can do normal operations in the system. >10 but <90 is someone who can change other people's projects or tasks, close tasks or projects they do not own, etc. Generally, a manager. >=90 is a system maintainter, who can do system maintenance such as add users, modify tables, etc. Q: What database engines are supported by PTS? A: PTS currently supports MSQL, MySQL, and PostGreSQL. With the new database abstraction module, other database engines are easy to add. Q: I get the first browse screen, but anything I do after that says that I'm not logged in. What's happening? A: Having the first browse screen come up means that PTS successfully authenticated you against the user database. This is good. The reason you keep getting a 'you're not logged in' is because PTS couldn't determine who you were the next time you requested data. PTS uses browser 'cookies' to retain information about yourself. If the cookie can't be set in the browser properly, that information doesn't get passwd back to PTS when you ask for more info. There are several reasons a cookie set like this can fail, and generate these problems. 1 You have cookies turned off in your browser, or you refused to accept one when it was sent to you. 2 Your browser does not support cookies. 3 You are set up to handle cookies, but the clock time on the system running PTS and the machine runningt he browser client are off by more than 15 minutes. PTS sets its cookies to automatically 'time out' after 15 minutes. If the clocks on the two machines are too far off, the cookie will time out as soon as it is set. Reset teh clock on one or both of the machines, and try again. Q: I've got everything installed, and the initial PTS screen comes up, but every time I try to login, even with a valid userid/password combo, PTS blows up with all sorts of messages about not being able to access the database. I'm using MySQL. A: You need to give access to the PTS database to the user that Apache is running under. I use a script like this: INSERT INTO user VALUES ('atlas.merl.com','nobody','','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y') GO INSERT INTO user VALUES ('localhost','nobody','','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y') GO INSERT INTO host VALUES ('atlas.merl.com','pts','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y') GO INSERT INTO host VALUES ('localhost','pts','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y') GO Obviously, substitute your server's hostname for atlas.merl.com. Also, if your Apache is running as some other user than nobody, you'll need to change that too.