[wp-hackers] Blank screen during WP installation

[Patrik Bóna]

Hi All,

Recently I was working on interesting problem. Wordpress installation 
was failing when it was trying connect to the database. Problem was that 
there was no error just blank screen.

I've tried to turn on error_reporting, but it did not help, so i started 
to trace executed PHP files...  After some time i've found that nothing 
is executed after following line in wp-includes/wp-db.php:

$this->dbh = @mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpassword, true);

So i've just removed @ and refreshed page and there was this error message:

Fatal error: mysql_connect() [<a 
href='function.mysql-connect'>function.mysql-connect</a>]: Using mysql 
has been disabled by admin. in 
/domains1/do1840700/public/www_root/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 341

So obviously problem was that mysql_connect was disabled (bad hosting), 
no discussion here... ;)

But from my point of view this can be much bigger problem for people who 
just want to try wordpress (on bad hosting) and after some clicks just 
blank page is showed to them... Google also did not help me, so i don't 
think that it can help to people who can not find problem themselves.

I know that mysql is prerequisite for WP, but why to not help people 
with this.

Maybe solution which just came to my mind will be to check with 
function_exists if mysql_connect is enabled somewhere during 
installation process. What do you think ?

Best regards

Patrik