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Site Restoration

#18616 administrator/index.php screen blank

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
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Environment Information

PHP version
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CMS Type
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Latest post by on Sunday, 26 January 2014 18:00 CST

dmulley
My live site is currently using Joomla 2.5.8 and had a 'free' version of akeeba backup installed.
The site recently developed a display problem with the global config screen (no css styling) and in an effort to fix this I installed admin tools pro (thinking the table repair feature may help) this resulted in an error message in akeeba back-up which required update - the update file was the akeeba backup pro version rather than the latest free version.
Since the components have been installed the administrator/index.php screen is blank - The error only seems to affect the administrator/index.php screen - other admin URLs work. I have not enabled or disabled any features - the installations both use their default settings and the error occurs immediately after the installation.
I have a backup jpa file taken before the installations and before the display error which I can rebuild locally without any problems - I have updated the local version to 2.5.17 which also works perfectly - however when I then try again to install either akeeba backup or akeeba admin tools to the local version I get the same blank screen error as the live 2.5.8 site - I tried manually removing the akeeba folders as suggested in your documentation before re-installing the components but get the same blank screen error. Please can you suggest a solution or advise what I may be doing incorrectly. Thank you.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
I am not sure which version of Akeeba Backup you used to have, but if I had to take a wild guess I'd think it's a very outdated one. Most likely you need to follow the instructions in https://www.akeebabackup.com/home/news/1502-troubleshooting-instructions-for-feb-2013-releases.html

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

dmulley
Thanks - since posting, and before receiving your response I attempted a further core upgrade to 2.5.17 which seems to have made things worse - the whole site now white screens, front-end and admin area.

I'm guessing that I may need to manually overwrite / update the Joomla installation via FTP before following your instructions via the link provided...? Is this what you would recommend ?

I had already attempted manually removal of the Akeeba files and folders suggested - but the reinstallation seemed to hang - as did the core upgrade installation.

I presume therefore that the white screen may be the result of an incomplete upgrade / installation ?

If all else fails I do have a 2.5.8 backup which can rebuild from - but this does not include a handful of K2 items I'd prefer not to lose if possible.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
A white page doesn't tell me much. However, 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.

IMPORTANT: Sometimes the error won't show. Edit your configuration.php and find the line starting with public $error_reporting and set it to:
public $error_reporting = 'development';

This instructs Joomla! to enable maximum error, warnings and notices verbosity. In 99.9% of cases it will result in the error messages being shown on the browser.

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

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• 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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