Unable to Install EE5 on MAMP Pro - 'Your config file does not appear to be formatted correctly'
How Do I?
Just downloaded the latest EE5, and tried going through the basic installation setup using MAMP Pro - i.e., setting up the database, setting up the virtual server, then accessing admin.php’ to trigger the installer. Have setup EE4 successfully before, without any issues. But in EE5, when trying to access ‘admin.php’ I simply get the message “Your config file does not appear to be formatted correctly.”
What I’ve already tried:
- checked that MAMP is configured to use the latest PHP (7.2.x)
- downloaded the EE_Wizard to check whether the server met all installation requirements - it does
- re-downloaded EE5 from the Expression Engine home page
- searched through the Forum and Google, but have been unable to find anyone with a similar issue…
Nothing seems to work, and I can’t get EE5 installed. Did anything change in the installation script between EE4 and EE5 that could be causing this issue? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Unfortunately I think this may actually be an issue.
I have two sites running on 5.0.0, both of which were upgraded in app from 4.x, and both are working fine. I hadn’t actually tried running through an install from the version 5 download. I figured I would try and help this person (no name on post) if I could so I did some testing myself…
I too attempted a MAMP Pro based install, and got the same error message.
I downloaded from GitHub, and got a ‘missing config file’ error instead.
I uploaded to a live server to try to remove MAMP from the equation, and the install failed there too.
Just to double check it is an issue with v5.x I then uploaded version 4.3.6 to the live server and installed it locally on MAMP. On both, 4.3.6 spins up the Installer fine.
It’s been confirmed that there is a known issue within admin.php (thanks for the reply on GitHub Kevin) that’s preventing the installer from firing up properly. You can get things working for now by pointing your browser to /system instead of admin.php
Same problem here. Except that I’m trying to install EE5 on an Arcustech account. Pointing my browser to ‘admin.php’ results in the message “Your config file does not appear to be formatted correctly.”
I think we must have been typing our replies at the same time 😊
Did you see the (I guess temporary) solution above?
Looks like release 5.0.1 resolves this issue from what I can tell.
Thank you for the quick feedback, @WinkingFrog! Indeed, going to /system allowed me to complete the instal.
Also: don’t know why my username is not displaying in the forum. I can’t see any ‘settings’ or preference in here that switches it on/off, and AFAIK I haven’t set anything up that would make me an ‘invisible’ forum member…
@WinkingFrog The workaround worked for me too. Thanks!
Hi, trying with ‘system’ as suggested gives me this:
Unable to locate your config file (user/config/config.php)
And, indeed, there is no config.php there. Why would that be?
Sounds like your working from the GitHub files, I think the file is missing as git struggles with empty files. You can create it yourself, as all it’s expecting is an empty config.php file.
If your on the latest version (5.0.1) you don’t need to use the /system workaround, the guys fixed it on the latest release.