Well, you've got their ear, so let them know. Send them a screenshot because you can bet they aren't familiar with vb and don't know you have a little test utility right there in Options.

Here, I dug back through my support tickets and found their explanation - this after giving them admin access and jumping through all kinds of hoops:

i would ask hosts if any other domain holder is using IM, and see some "physical" evidence that it is actually working for someone else. as stated before, i had a nightmare with this package, until i finally got it installed "properly". u could save urself a lot of useless testing etc

well they cant enable exec() or its enabled for the whole server and this is a huge security risk they say.

I did however find this useful test script
http://www.expertzzz.com/Downloadz/view/880

which i put on my server
http://96cougar.com/cgi-bin/magickpm.cgi

and it tells me that they are using version 5.51, and not image magick 6

i clicked your "test" link.... and it says it all. i guess ur hosts are going going to tell u anything but the real reason why IM wont run, that being, IM is a +++++ to install! :) they either can't figure it, or can't be bothered. i will try dig out the exact build files that i used on the server, which u can suggest to them. they will, however, still need to load libs for each graphic format u need, (thats after u installed the app!). it really is a ball-ache. :(

--------------- Added [DATE]1224858243[/DATE] at [TIME]1224858243[/TIME] ---------------

here are some details of my install:
IM build = ImageMagick-6.4.1
here are 3 of the lib files i installed (the "-devel" extension is important!)
libjpeg-devel.i386
libpng-devel.i386
libtiff-devel.i386
here is the shell command i used to configure, prior to "make", then "make install" (which worked for me :) = ./configure --enable-shared --with-perl --disable-openmp --with-jpeg --with-png --with-tiff --disable-static LDFLAGS='-L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/lib -rpath,/usr/lib'

here are 2 shell commands which tell the whole story, about the install and config, of IM
identify -list configure
identify -list format

hope this helps

they installed 6.4.4 for me, and it still isnt working.

the test script now returns good info, and passes all tests, except the one for the font which says it needs to be uploaded (it is) and it doesnt tell you the directory that the script is located in, or the path to upload the font file.... which is the path the script is located in.

ill pass your post on to them and see what they say about.... what i do know, is that they wont enable exec(), they said they've had a hacker break in with that enabled.

i would say u are nearly there! :)

edit: default location for libfreetype would be /usr/lib

this is what my host has to say most recently

I have did the

i dont know what to say....
however, i am seriously tempted to open a server just for "ppl who cant get their host to run IM".............

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't IM mostly just useful for fancier captchas? If so, forget it - captchas were broken long ago, and now the bots have an easier time reading them than people do.

i think it used for a little bit more than this :p