By Saoirse1916 on

I performed the update from 6.6 to 6.8 and my website still works, I can edit individual pages, but I cannot get into the Administer controls. This is particularly frustrating because my site is still in offline mode as per the upgrade instructions! Can anyone point me in the right direction to roll back or fix this? Thanks very much!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

ambientdrup’s picture

ambientdrup commented

I just ran into an issue like this upgrading from 5.12 to 5.14. If you moved your files over via FTP check your queue to make sure they all transferred successfully. I had a few files from the /includes and /modules folders that did not transfer for some reason. This was causing my main public site to show a white screen, however I could still get into admin (opposite of your issue). So check that. If you see some failed file transfers, try moving them over again. I moved them over individually and then my site was fine.

-backdrifting

Saoirse1916’s picture

Saoirse1916 commented

That's a good thought as I ran into this on another site (non-Drupal) a while ago, but I checked my log and everything transferred over properly. I just rolled back to 6.6 and it didn't help. The public site still loads fine (for me, since I'm logged in as an admin) but the admin console is throwing a 500 internal server error so I can't turn the site back on.

Saoirse1916’s picture

Saoirse1916 commented

I created a new database, uploaded all the new 6.8 files again and re-ran the setup. Once I got through that I changed my settings.php file to point back to my existing database and I've still got the same problem. So I re-ran the update.php script which executed, but again, same problem. Short of blowing the whole thing away and rewriting my metric-buttload of content, I'm out of ideas.

However -- and I have no idea why, but the site is now accessible because it's not in offline mode. But, for some reason my IE6 CSS file is busted and I can't make changes because I can't get into the admin console to clear the cached CSS.

I'm quickly becoming a fan of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school.

cog.rusty’s picture

cog.rusty commented

Are the admin menu options missing, or you can see them but the links don't work?
Did update.php run and completed successfully, without any timeouts?

Does direct browsing to /admin work
Does direct browsing to /admin/settings/site-maintenance work?
If not, what about /?q=admin or /?q=admin/settings/site-maintenance

Saoirse1916’s picture

Saoirse1916 commented

I can get in to update individual pages after I'm logged in -- from there, I can see and click on the Administration link (/admin), but it either throws a 500 internal server error or simply a blank white page. If I browse directly to /admin, /admin/settings/site-maintenance, /?q=admin/settings/site-maintenance, or /?q=admin it's all the same -- really long wait to load the page, then either a 500 error or a blank screen.

cog.rusty’s picture

cog.rusty commented

About the blank pages, run a <?php phpinfo() ?> in a Drupal page to see if the memory_limit is too low.

About the 500 server error, which of the 4 URLs mentioned do that?

Saoirse1916’s picture

Saoirse1916 commented

The memory_limit is currently set to 128M -- is that too low? And I believe all the pages come up with the 500 error, but I'm double-checking now...it takes quite a while for that error to come up.

cog.rusty’s picture

cog.rusty commented

No memory size problem, 128M is big. Actually it is so big that on most shared hosts it wouldn't work, it would probably hit some server limit and ignored (that is why I suggested running phpinfo() from inside a Drupal page), or else it would fail to deliver randomly or cause random delays. But if you do have that memory available it is fine.

About the 500 server error, if it only appears in the /admin page and not in the other 3, it could be a case of a reserved path.

Saoirse1916’s picture

Saoirse1916 commented

Well, I just checked it with /?q=admin and I'm only getting a blank page, not a 500 error. Does that mean reserved path, and if so, what does that mean?

EDIT: with /admin/settings/site-maintenance I get a 500 error, so it seems to be connected to the friendly url option somehow.

cog.rusty’s picture

cog.rusty commented

It doesn't mean much. It would be more interesting if the 500 server error happened only with /admin, in case the server was using /admin for some other administrative function (outside Drupal).

cog.rusty’s picture

cog.rusty commented

If it happens only with clean URLs, try setting RewriteBase / in .htaccess (or to some path, if Drupal is using a subdirectoy path).

The problem could have been caused by overwriting the .htaccess file which used to contain some required settings. Which host is it? There are some troubleshooting FAQ for specific hosts in Documentation.

Saoirse1916’s picture

Saoirse1916 commented

RewriteBase is set to "/" already, unfortunately. This is hosted on Network Solutions so I've already put in place a handful of workarounds but nothing that I did has been changed by 6.8, I don't think.

EDIT: Ok...now I tried to get into /admin and I just get the white screen, not the 500 error.

cog.rusty’s picture

cog.rusty commented

Take a look here for more ideas about the blank screens: http://drupal.org/node/158043

Saoirse1916’s picture

Saoirse1916 commented

How odd -- based on that link I added the error reporting code to the top of index.php. Lo and behold, my admin console came right up and I was able to get to the Available updates page. There were 2 that needed updates, BBCode and Google Analytics. I downloaded BBCode and uploaded it then went to refresh and I'm back to waiting for minutes to see something happen.

However, now something does happen:

Warning: MySQL server has gone away query: INSERT INTO watchdog...etc.
/includes/database.mysqli.inc on line 128
About 1000 times...

line 128 is: trigger_error(check_plain(mysqli_error($active_db) ."\nquery: ". $query), E_USER_WARNING);

Any idea what this means?

cog.rusty’s picture

cog.rusty commented

The "MySQL server has gone away" error is an elusive one... many possible causes. Here is what MySQL says: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/gone-away.html

There is a user-supplied page in Documentation, with a bunch of suggested settings and a few comments: http://drupal.org/node/259580

The usual advice, some of which work in different cases, are:
- Set a larger max_allowed_packet and wait_timeout in my.cnf
- Or, set mysqli.reconnect = On in php.ini
- Or, disable database logging in Drupal

Saoirse1916’s picture

Saoirse1916 commented

Well, I have no idea why but it works now. I kept hitting admin and about one out of every five times I could get to the page -- I updated my Google Analytics (again) among other things...

...I was just about to say that it's working but of course now it's not. Everything except the Available Updates report seems to be up and running, but that one page causes the seemingly infinite delay. However, I'm going to consider this a win and count myself lucky for now.

smitcher’s picture

smitcher commented

Hi,

I tried all the same solutions:

increase memory
RewriteBase
etc

But in the end simply renaming the 'update' folder in modules did the trick. Now I can get into the admin panel and disable the module correctly.

Thanks for everyone's contributions.

John

Saoirse1916’s picture

Saoirse1916 commented

I think I've narrowed this down to the Update Status module -- that's the only page that was hanging and now that I've fought through it and got the necessary updates done things are going well. But that one page still times out or throws the MySQL went away error. So, I disabled the Module and everything else is working great.

Now I've got to figure out how to check for updates...

Greg J. Smith’s picture

Greg J. Smith commented

I am indebted to you! After 8 hours of PHP troubleshooting today, I found this thread. There is some kind of an issue with the update status module. I was having several issues which appeared to be related to memory, but ultimately it was this core module that was causing the issues. I removed it and I'm working fine now. Thanks for documenting your troubles. Please post if/when you figure out how to get updates, although at this point I'm just concerned with things working properly.

Saoirse1916’s picture

Saoirse1916 commented

Ditto -- I'm still looking for an update solution though I'm glad my site is at least working normally now. I haven't seen any other issues with the update module so it may be just a matter of waiting until the next major update for it to work again.

Haggle’s picture

Haggle commented

I get a white page for the admin menu now since the update.
I can access
/admin/settings/site-maintenance
when typing it in directly. Need advice on this so i can continue to administer my webpage. The modules page does not work this way, and I can access the admin menu if I arrange the menu by module as opposed to its default view. Most items work, some give the white page.

Been doing some fooling around. Tried replacing the recent files with the 6.6 files and got the same error. I'm guessing this error is due to the database edit made in 6.8

cog.rusty’s picture

cog.rusty commented

There have been no changes to the database schema since 6.5 (last September). Doesn't the admin/reports/status page report any problem?

I would check other causes (failure to complete running update.php because of insufficient server resources, a bad theme, cache problems, the update status module...)

Did you have any custom settings in your old .htacess file, for example to increase php memory, and you replaced it with the new one?

Haggle’s picture

Haggle commented

Bingo. these small things i always forget cause i do so much editing.

Thank you

for all those that need it

php_value memory_limit 64M

Saoirse1916’s picture

Saoirse1916 commented

I just did a new install of Drupal 6.8 and have the same problem -- if I turn off the update checking module, all is well. But as soon as I turn it back on, I'm hosed. In my case, this may be some sort of conflict with Network Solutions, since both of my sites are hosted there.

Mark_J’s picture

Mark_J commented

In relation to white/blank pages, once you get the page, click on the address bar of your browser to focus it and hit "Enter". I had blank pages problem which was caused by a module but somehow by accident I focused the address bar and hit Enter and the requested page loaded with some helpful errors thrown on the screen. This is just an idea you can try....