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Site Restoration

#14580 Errors accessing Templates Manager after restoring Backup

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
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Environment Information

PHP version
n/a
CMS Type
Other
CMS Version
n/a
Backup Tool Version
n/a
Kickstart version
n/a

Latest post by nicholas on Tuesday, 08 January 2013 01:59 CST

user32656

Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I read the related troubleshooter articles above before posting (which pages?)? Y
Have I searched the tickets before posting? Y
Have I read the documentation before posting (which pages?)? Y
Joomla! version: 2.5.8
PHP version: 3.2.4
MySQL version: 5.1.44
Host: localhost
Akeeba Backup version which took the backup: 3.6.12
Kickstart version used to extract the backup: 3.6.0

Description of my issue:

I have successfully installed my site via kickstart many times on my local machine for testing but today a new error occurred.  The restoration was successful, but when I try to access my "Templates Manager" from the Control Panel I get:

Safari: whitescreen
Firefox: "opening index php" popup: screenshot attached 
Chrome Reads:

No data received
Unable to load the webpage because the server sent no data.
Here are some suggestions:
Reload this webpage later.
Error 324 (net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE): The server closed the connection without sending any data.

Any advice you might provide would be great.  Clearing the cache in Chrome seems to provide temporary (1-3 clicks) relief and then back to the problem of accessing again.

Many thanks, Chris

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

A white page or a page with a 500 Internal Server Error is, in fact, either a .htaccess issue to a PHP fatal error in disguise.

First, let's see if it is a .htaccess issue. Try renaming the .htaccess file in your site's root to htaccess.bak If there is a .htaccess file in the site's administrator directory, try renaming it as well. If that solves the problem, the issue was with a directive in your .htaccess file. We'd like to recommend you to try removing directives from your .htaccess until you find the one which causes the problem.

If that doesn't help, the error you are receiving is in fact a PHP error in disguise. First, check your server's error logs (not the access logs) immediately after visiting the page which throws the error. There should be an exact description of the PHP fatal error which occurred. Sometimes you can find the error messages in files called error_log or error.log inside the site's root and/or administrator directories. If unsure about the error log location, please consult your host. Most likely the error logs are available in your site's cPanel, Plesk control panel or similar hosting account management facility.

If your host does not give you access to the error logs and you have access to the Joomla! administrator area, please log in to your site's back-end, go to Global Configuration, click on the Server tab and set the Error Reporting to Maximum (Joomla! 1.5) or Development (Joomla! 2.x and later). Try visiting the problem page again.

If you still get a blank page, edit your configuration.php file and put the following code right after the final closing curly brace ( this is what a curly brace looks like --> } ) but before the closing PHP tag (it looks like ?> that is a question mark and a greater-than sign):

ini_set( 'display_errors', true );
error_reporting( E_ALL ); 

Try visiting the problem page again.

If you still get a white page, please remote the two lines from your configuration.php file. Edit the .htaccess file in your site's root. If you don't have a file named .htaccess create a new one. Beware that htaccess.txt is a DIFFERENT FILE and will NOT work! Add the following to the end of the file:

php_flag display_errors On
php_value error_reporting 32767

and retry loading the problem page.

If you still get a white page, remove the two lines from your .htaccess file. Now, create a file called php.ini with the following content:

display_errors=on
error_reporting=E_ALL

and upload it into your site's root and your site's administrator directory. Retry loading the problem page.

If you still get a white page, delete the php.ini files your created and choose a different host. If your host doesn't allow you to debug any PHP-related issues there is no point paying them.

Please note that if you can not understand what the PHP error message means, just copy and paste it here verbatim so that we can take a look and point you to the right direction.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user32656

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.  Unfortunately each of the items still results in the issues I mention in the original post.  I did access the error log and have a repeated error which I don't understand.  The error arises when I try to click the "template manager" from the backend:

httpd(783) malloc: *** error for object 0x1: pointer being freed was not allocated
*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:15 2013] [notice] child pid 833 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:16 2013] [notice] child pid 868 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:16 2013] [notice] child pid 783 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:17 2013] [notice] child pid 870 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:26 2013] [notice] child pid 878 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:26 2013] [notice] child pid 869 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:27 2013] [notice] child pid 875 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:28 2013] [notice] child pid 879 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:45 2013] [notice] child pid 883 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:45 2013] [notice] child pid 881 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:46 2013] [notice] child pid 884 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:47 2013] [notice] child pid 882 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Mon Jan 07 14:30:47 2013] [notice] child pid 874 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)

Any advice is greatly appreciated.  Thanks, Chris

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

That's PHP crashing. It's not related to backing up and restoring your site. You will need to use a different Aapache/MySQL/PHP package that the one you're currently using. Try Zend Server CE. It's usually the most stable.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user32656

Ok thanks. Hmm.  This is on my local machine using XAMPP.  Any suggestions?

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

Yep, Zend Server CE. It comes from the company which builds the PHP engine. If that package doesn't work with your site, nothing will.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user32656

I am so sorry.  I am a bit of a Joomla noob.  I have however seen / read that XAMPP is plenty for the local testing of a site.  I downloaded and tried Zend but it is much too heavy duty for my skill set (command line skills w/r/t uploading the kickstart.php and .jpa files).

I have a tough time believing that XAMPP is suddenly having such serious issues in my latest restore.  Can you think of any other solutions?

Perhaps I need to use the latest kickstart.php?

I was copying and using a older one (5 weeks old).???

Again, many thanks.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

The problem is with the PHP executable shipped with XAMPP. It crashes due to buggy memory handling. That's what "segmentation fault" a.k.a. "segfault" means. If there was a different solution than the one I already proposed I would have told you.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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