Hi,

on my Drupal 5.7 site, accessing FAQ pages causes a White Screen of Death. The module was working fine for a few months, the "misbehaivour" is new. I don't know if it is caused by 5.x-2.9 (an then to *.dev), or by other changes on the server. The site runs on a dedicated server, the resource limit in php.ini is currently set to 65M; for testing purposes, I increased the memory limit temporarily to 128M and 256M which didn't prevent the FAQ module to cause the WSOD. I'm not sure which other configuration parameters might apply (MySQL config, etc.)

The Drupal watchdog doesn't record any errors; the same with Apache's access.log and error.log: Nothing is logged, not even accessing the FAQ module's URL. I went through the troubleshooting instructions on http://drupal.org/node/31819 and http://drupal.org/node/158043 which did not help. Adding

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', TRUE);
ini_set('display_startup_errors', TRUE);

/**
* @file
*/
....
?>

to the top of index.php did not show any error messages, also.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help & greetings, -asbdpl

Comments

nancydru’s picture

nancydru
she/her/hers
Primary language English
Location Boston
commented

Have you added any other modules lately? What happens if you disable FAQ?
Is this happening immediately upon going to the site or at some particular point?
You can have a white screen if nothing is written to the page; is whatever you're doing supposed to select anything to display?
Have you tried disabling other modules and see if this goes away?

asbdpl’s picture

asbdpl commented

Hi nancyw,

* Have you added any other modules lately?

Yes, five (Backlinks, Directory, Quick tabs, Edit term, Node relativity); we also disabled and uninstalled some other modules (Related content, Calendar, Taxonomy Lineage, Taxonomy Force all, and Jstools) which we found not be necessary/useful.

* What happens if you disable FAQ?

Nothing unusual, at least no error messages or warnings, and no new watchdog entries. In admin/build/modules/uninstall, an new record for the FAQ module appears; I did not try to uninstall the module since I'm not sure if it would purge the existing FAQ pages. Accessing the FAQ page after disabling the module results in the usual "page not found" message which is recored from admin/logs/watchdog as a "page not found" warning. What am I supposed to look for?

* Is this happening immediately upon going to the site or at some particular point?

So far, it happened when acessing .../faq (addition: see below). Drupal core functions and modules are not affected, IMHO.

* You can have a white screen if nothing is written to the page; is whatever you're doing supposed to select anything to display?

Yes, according to admin/settings/faq, it should display faq records and the site's top/bottom/right/left elements.

* Have you tried disabling other modules and see if this goes away?

I disabled the four most recently installed new modules; that didn't change the WSOD when accessing FAQ pages. I did not try to disable other/older modules; experimenting with this would, according to my experience with Drupal from tha last few years, probably cause more harm than abandoning the FAQ module (Drupal is fragile, when utilizing 3rd party modules).

Addition: A few hours ago, I received a report from a user that can't create content enymore; any page she is creating results in a WSOD. According to admin/content/node, the articles are saved to the database, but a moderator or admin can't access the node, also. However, a user with administrative privielges can *edit* (...node/23415/edit...) the node, but when saving, also gets a WSOD. So possibly FAQ module simply shows simptoms that have some other cause. I'm not sure how to handle this issue properly; should it be closed/postponed? I seems a bit like just another Drupal mystery ;-/

Thanks & reagrds,
-asbdpl

nancydru’s picture

nancydru
she/her/hers
Primary language English
Location Boston
commented

Hmm... I'm guessing that the two incidents have the same cause, and it is not likely that FAQ is causing this. Of the modules you just installed, I would think the only one that might be in this mix is Node Relativity. You might want to temporarily disable it.

Another, semi-drastic possibility is to force update.php to run.

If you are using a access control module, rebuilding access permissions might have an effect. (Please: back up the database before trying this.)

nancydru’s picture

nancydru
she/her/hers
Primary language English
Location Boston
commented
Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)
asbdpl’s picture

asbdpl commented
Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Closed (won't fix)

Hi nancyw,

after playing around with activating and deactivating the FAQ module, /faq started to display content again; however, I could only get the description, not any faq questions, whatever I configured in the module settings - but the "recent faq" block displayed the questions. If I'd wanted to use this module, I'd had to open a new issue. However, I don't like problem A leading to problem B without resolving problem A completely.

Thus I took the chance of accessing the content, copied it no vanilla Drupal nodes, added them to a "book", and deleted the FAQ pages one by one. The content fields table content_type_faq was now automatically deleted when disabling the module; also, the module became available for a full uninstallation in admin/build/modules/uninstall. When uninstalling, Drupal reported again: "The content fields table content_type_ has been deleted". I'm now running one modules less.

Regarding the other points you mentioned:

* Node Relativity - "You might want to temporarily disable it". I tried this for a few days, it had no effect to the FAQ module. But yes, if it comes to system resources, this useful module is definitely a canditate for saving memory and cpu cycles.
* "force update.php to run" - I'm doing this, as usually is/was recommended, after updating every module, meaning: I'm running update.php a few times per week.
* "using a access control module" - as far as I know, i'm not running anything in this area besides what Drupal offers at admin/user/access.

Thanks for your time; from my point of view, this issue can be closed or whatever is appropriate in this case.

Regards, asbdpl.

nancydru’s picture

nancydru
she/her/hers
Primary language English
Location Boston
commented

I'm sorry you felt the need to abandon FAQ. It really is a good module and one of the better functioning and documented ones you will find on Drupal. I wish you had seen this one through. I am only pinch-hitting here while Stella is on honeymoon.

stella’s picture

stella commented

If anyone does encounter this issue again, I'd be interested in knowing which faq settings you are using, especially layouts and if you are using categories or not.

asbdpl: by any chance were you using the 3rd party "category" module rather than the core "taxonomy" one?

Cheers,
Stella

asbdpl’s picture

asbdpl commented

@stella:

> by any chance were you using the 3rd party "category" module rather than the core "taxonomy" one?

It was installed about two years ago, then uninstalled and later trashed my forums. Surely I'll never touch it again ;)

Regards, asbdpl