[wp-hackers] Plugin Activation

[Andy Staines]

I asked three or four weeks back if anyone had any idea why one user  
of my forum plugin was not seeing the admin menu (under 'Manage').  
This went unresolved but there is something weird going on so I  
thought I'd have another go to see if anyone had any ideas.

I now have three users with this problem (out of a large number who  
don't) - two are using 2.2 and one 2.1. The only thing they seem to  
have in common is they are all using MySQL 4.1.20 - and, what's more,  
the activate hook that creates the tables is also either failing, or,  
MySQL 4.1.20 doesn't want to do it. So these three end up with no  
tables created, an incomplete activation of the plugin and no admin  
menu!

The questions raised by this are - why should 4.1.20 fail to create  
the tables and why should this stop the menu from being created. I  
can see no relationship between the db and the menuing system. Plus,  
in all cases, the plugin appears correctly in the 'active_plugins'  
option record.

I would really like to sort this out if possible but I am completely  
stuck for ideas. Can anyone advise? (On my original query I had  
responses to do with the activate hook usage and the add_submenu_page  
usage but these work fine 99.9% of the time and are correct.  
Something else seems to be in play here).

As an extra item, I tried the simple expedient in testing of forcing  
the tables to fail via code. This led to the plugin activation page  
returning the message: 'Plugin could not be activated because it  
triggered a fatal error' but it WAS in fact activated (albeit  
crippled) and I still got the menu appearing! I assume this is a bug  
in the plugin activation code.

This is driving me nuts and my hair is turning white. OK - it was  
already white but now it's falling out. Can anyone point me in the  
right direction?

regards
Andy