FAQ

Common questions:

Does Dolphin.php require MySQL or any other database?

No, Dolphin.php does not require any databases and it can run smoothly without any.

Is Dolphin.php free?

Yes, it is and I think it will remain free and open-source.

Are there any stable and reliable versions of Dolphin.php? Why are there only development and testing?

With each release, Dolphin.php becomes more and more stable and tested. You can help me to make sooner release of stable versions if you agree to test my file manager on your site.

Current "testing" version is quite reliable if PHP settings of your hoster are correct enough. If you're good with PHP, you could tell me about specific PHP settings at your hosting, and I will take them into account to make Dolphin.php more stable and less demanding.

Design of Dolphin.php is just terrible! Are you going to fix that?

The design of file manager will be changed soon, when it is ready. It will not violate copyrights of Gmail and Microsoft as it does now.

What is the sphere of Dolphin.php appliance?

Dolphin.php is designed for web site owners and just people who need to manage their files via Web interface. Dolphin.php is packed with FTP support, but you cannot use Dolphin.php as FTP manager! FTP support is just an additional method to access the your files on the same server! So, if you own a web site on a shared hosting, this file manager is just what you need. It's designed to be stable and work even in those situations, where others don't.

Dolphin.php can also help you to solve quite popular problem, when you're unable to handle with files, which were uploaded by some PHP script. As my file manager can use both FTP and internal PHP file functions, it feels no difference between files, that were uploaded by FTP and those, which were uploaded by PHP. It can work with all of them.

How can I connect to an FTP server, using Dolphin.php?

As Dolphin.php is not an FTP client, there is no legal way to do so. I recommend you to use real FTP clients, such as net2ftp

Troubleshooting

I get 500 Internal Server Error when I go to dolphin folder

This error may happen, if PHP is not installed as module at your web server. Although it's highly recommended to have PHP installed as a module, it's not obligatory. To get rid of 500 error, open .htaccess and comment lines, containing php_... To comment line, just insert "#" symbol in it's beginning.

I cannot enter Dolphin.php, using my login and password

This error may happen if config.php of a file manager has syntax errors. In this case, Dolphin.php uses the default configuration without FTP settings and login - password as auth data. If you're not able to fix syntax error in config.php, copy contents of system/config-default.php and make changes to config.php again.

I cannot copy and cut files, using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V

Some browsers (maybe, only Safari?) do not allow to intercept Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V and Ctrl+X. You may use Shift+Ctrl+C, Shift+Ctrl+V and Shift+Ctrl+X in this case.

Terminal does not work!

In current versions of Dolphin.php it is not checked, whether your hoster allows to execute shell commands. So, your PHP scripts may be just not allowed to use shell.

In case you are sure, that PHP has rights to call exec(), check PATH variable:

*nix:

• run echo $PATH — the list of colon-separated directories should be printed
• if you get error, you should consider using another PHP shell
• if you get a list like /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin, proceed the next step
• try to run the utility you need with different folders (/bin or /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin or /sbin or /usr/sbin or /usr/local/sbin)
• you should run the utility as /folder/utility (e.g. /bin/ls should always work)
• try different directories (quite often the directory you need is /usr/local/bin)
• if nothing helps, ask your hosting support, where is the required utility and how to use it
• when you find the directory you need, remember it and ask your hosting support to add the required directory to PATH environment variable
• you may always launch commands, using the path to executable file (e.g. /bin/ls -l), so you may skip previous step

• run set PATH
• you should get something like Path=... PATHEXT=...
• if you do not get such a list, consider using another PHP Shell utilities
• try to launch the utility you need, specifying its directory (e.g. C:\WINDOWS\system32\ipconfig)
• when you find the required directory, ask your hosting provider how to add this directory to PATH
• you can always specify path to utility, so you may skip previous step

I launched some application through terminal and system stopped responding

• If your server is configured correctly, the application will be killed automatically after some time. So, just wait a few minutes
• If you do not want to wait, or configuration of server is incorrect, you can kill the hang application manually:
•  
• connect to your server via SSH (you could use PuTTY as SSH client), VNC (you could use, e.g. RealVNC) or any other remote control system, if you have such an access
• in case you have no remote access to server, ask your support to kill the application you launched (you should remember the name of launched application)
• after you connect, kill the application:
• SSH with *nix server OS:
  1) type ps -ax | grep application_name, where application_name is a name of utility you launched
  2) find a line with your application (e.g. if the command was ping yandex.ru, the corresponding line will be like 86287 ?? S 0:00.00 ping yandex.ru)
  3) determine pid of your process — it is the first number in line (e.g. 86287)
  4) run kill -9 pid, where pid is the pid of your process
  5) the command may fail because you might not have rights to perform that operation: you will need to ask hosting support to kill an application in this case
• Windows with remote graphical access:
  1) Click the taskbar with right button, select "Task Manager" in context menu
  2) Go to "Processes" tab
  3) Find and select an application you launched
  4) Click "End task" and confirm your choice
• Other:
  In other cases I would recommend to ask your hosting support, how to kill launched applications.