The claroline install instructions request setting your php.ini file
to the following values. 

        short_open_tag       = On
        register_globals     = On
        safe_mode            = Off
        magic_quotes_gpc     = On
        magic_quotes_runtime = Off
        error_reporting      = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE (*)

(register_globals is turned off in php.ini by default and definitely
needs to be turned on)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To finalize Claroline, please create a MySQL database.

mysql -u root -p <<__EOF
create database claroline;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON claroline.* TO 'claroline@localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'mysecretpass';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
__EOF

and direct your browser to 

http://localhost/my-claroline-install-dir/claroline/install/

(Please note that claroline uses the subdirectory "claroline". So if
your installation directory is also called "claroline", this results
in the link: 

http://localhost/claroline/claroline/install/

)

You should see a warning for step 1 which you can safely ignore and that
should also appear a warning during setup of the database access, because
we already created the database.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional notes:

Claroline will not work if you install it with the
VHOST_LINK_TYPE="soft" setting in your /etc/vhosts/webapp-config
file. So don't complain...

Setting "register_globals = On" in the php.ini is generally not
considered to be safe. From the documentation in php.ini:

; You should do your best to write your scripts so that they do not require
; register_globals to be on;  Using form variables as globals can easily lead
; to possible security problems, if the code is not very well thought of.

In addition Claroline wants its whole web directory to be owned by the
webserver which many administrators might consider as unsafe. During
installation Claroline will create several files in the directory tree.  

Taken together I do not believe Claroline has been written with
security given a very high priority. 

So ...

!! PLEASE CONSIDER THE POSSIBLE SECURITY RISKS WHEN INSTALLING
!! CLAROLINE.