I have got a fresh installation of zenphoto, just to give it a try.

I just can access the admin area. If I try to go to the gallery or to a single image i get the following error in chrome:

Error 310 (net::ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS): There were too many redirects.

Firefox is similar and IE can not open the page either.

There is no difference in switchin mod_rewrite off or on in the admin panel.

Zenphoto is installed in a folder in the root level.
subdomain.toplevel.de is pointing to this folder.

If I delete the htaccess the index.php is trying to redirect to admin.php. Since there is no admin.php in this folder level it ends up with an 404 error - admin.php not found.

Second at the setup I regognized that I only have the following grants:
SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, ALTER, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, LOCK TABLES

INDEX is missing. What is INDEX needed for?

Probably your server is not up to the task of running Zenphoto (= to small, too slow). I can assure that Zenphoto runs fine on pretty standard shared hosting (at least the one I know).

As I understand the htaccess causes a redirection circle that will never end. Maybe because I use a Subdomain?

b) What about INDEX for the Database?

The admin of Zenphoto does not even use htaccess/modrewrite. I have no idea, sorry.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/create-index.html

If i don't use mod_rewrite and call the index.php the only thing that can happen is a redirect since there is nothing else in the index.php than:
`<?php /* To prevent directory listing of this directory: */ header("Location: admin.php"); ?>`

So you are referring to the index.php file within /zp-core. Yes, that is correct and leads you to admin.php as that is the start page for administration. I don't understand the problem. That page is also used if you use modrewrite (yourdomain.com/admin leads to the same page).

within /zp-core? no, the index.php is in the rootfolder.

if i set mode_rewrite off an delete the .htaccess i don't have a `

RewriteRule ^admin/?$ zp-core/admin.php [R,L]` anymore.

So if i call the subdomain.toplevel.de the server is calling index.php as normal, but the header redirection goes to subdomain.toplevel.de/admin.php and because of the missing .htaccess it is not routed anywhere. Since I don't have an admin.php @ this folder level I get a 404 error.

So i have no way to access the gallery, because with an htacees and modrewrite I get that 310 error and without I get an 404. Since I have a clean install I don't see how to make zenphoto work.

Zenphoto's root index.php file has around 200 lines of code and is 8 kb big and does not contain that line at all.

I suggest a proper reinstall as something is clearly not right.

If you really have removed all .htaccess files you will have NO redirection. But of course, you can always enter the full admin url: `subdomain.toplevel.de/zp-core/admin.php`

But what I really suspect given your use of `subdomain` is that you have a problem with your url resolution. What does the subdomain resolve to? Sounds like it might be pointing into the zp-core folder since that is where the index.php script you cite resides.