Did you ever have one of those days where every piece of technology you touched went up in screaming flames and thick smoke? That was today for me.
It began while trying to test the new 2.661 version of MovableType. Typically what I do is to create a copy of the MT scripts in another directory on my CGI directory (editing the mt.cfg appropriately) and making sure I make copies of all extlibs and plugins that I have installed (a small number, the MTBlacklist plugin to zap spam, the ifempty plugin to set up better name individual archives (read more), and the MT_RSS plugin to insert RSS feeds in the sidebars.
So I install the new version, run mt-check, swap names of my current and new MT directories… and all kinds of crap starts to happen on rebuilds. I revert back, and still get weird things. Server error logs are spitting our pre-mature script header errors, and problems trying to read the plug-in scripts. I try pulling them one by one, downloading fresh copies, checking permissions and unix file settings. Still hosed.
Perhaps the database is hosed. Make a new database table, install a brand spanking new copy of MT, re-create all the settings and templates foe one blog (no content, just the barebones). Still getting Server 500 boo-boos.
Bottom line, at this point it is a problem with the MT_RSS and/or MT_List plug-ins– if I remove them from my templates, everything rebuilds.
Oops, just read of some problems (1, 2) with MT 2.66 and the Blacklist plugin… maybe that is a culprit too.
Bottom line, while chasing this one around, I did not get to even touch the real work I should be doing. Don’t tell anyone.
Later…. Weird thing about this problem is that the MT_RSS plugin does work fine on rebuilds here and the CDB sidebar under Best of Show, where the feed is just a single RSS file ( the looping method using MTList seems to not to work at all). Maybe there are problems parsing some of the feeds….
