Site says: "Unable to complete this request due to an error"

[nikoka]

Hi all,

My client has happily been updating their site (using ProcessWire) for a couple of months, all of a sudden the site now says: "Unable to complete this request due to an error". What could cause this so suddenly? No one has touched the files, so could this be some sort of server issue or what?

All help very much appreciated, thanks!

[ryan]

Nikoka,

Can you edit /site/config.php -- locate the line that says "$config->debug = false;" and change it to true.

Then try to load a page in your site. You should get a more specific error message. I am guessing that there was some change at the server that affects PW or the database index needs a repair or something simple like that, but let me know what you find.

OR, you can check /site/assets/logs/errors.txt and see what it says at the bottom of it. For security, you can't access this file from your web browser, so you'd have to do it from the file system (FTP, shell, etc.)

Please reply to let me know what you find,

Ryan

[nikoka]

Phew, it's all working now.

The server died before I had a chance to get the log file, but after a few hours of waiting everything is now working great. Apparently the server had been overloaded. This is what I found in the log file (actually around a hundred of these):

2011-06-22 22:59:40: Unknown User:/?/:ProcessWire Error:Exception:  (in /home/vhome/tms/www/wire/core/Database.php line 72)

Thanks again Ryan!

[ryan]

Thanks for the followup. Just to confirm, it was a server outage not a ProcessWire one? The error message you posted sounds like it was running into trouble trying to access the MySQL db.

[nikoka]

That's right, no problem whatsoever with ProcessWire, just a server outage.

I suspect the database had gone first (hence the "Unable to complete this request due to an error") and soon after the rest. Now everything's running smoothly.

[Adam Kiss]

Nikolka: just a question: what's the load on this server (daily visits, page views & content size)?

[Soma]

I experience the same error.

2011-12-22 06:52:45: Unknown User:/?/:ProcessWire Error:Exception:  SELECT id, class, flags, data FROM modules ORDER BY class (in /home/aoccons/www/aoc/wire/core/Database.php line 72)  #0 /home/aoccons/www/aoc/wire/core/Modules.php(160): Database->query('SELECT id, clas...') #1 /home/aoccons/www/aoc/wire/core/Modules.php(79): Modules->load('/home/aoccons/w...') #2 /home/aoccons/www/aoc/wire/core/ProcessWire.php(100): Modules->__construct('/home/aoccons/w...', '/home/aoccons/w...') #3 /home/aoccons/www/aoc/wire/core/ProcessWire.php(45): ProcessWire->load(Object(Config)) #4 /home/aoccons/www/aoc/index.php(166): ProcessWire->__construct(Object(Config)) #5 {main}

[ryan]

The query in question is the first one executed by PW and this is what you'll see if there's a DB connection error. That's not ideal, and I'm not sure how I missed that error check the first time around–I'm updating the Database class to detect connection errors and throw a more appropriate error message. That way we can see exactly why it can't connect.

[Soma]

Great thanks Ryan. I also was wondering whats going on, Website runs normal, although very slowly loading from server.

[Svet]

Hi everyone.

I had terrible thing happen to my web site, hackers got to it and now I have to clean up the mess... I got new 'wire' folder, and did upgrade since the site is already broken.

I use to get the message above, but I change debug to true like Ryan suggested, and now it says

Fatal error: Exception: Required PDO class (database) not found - please add PDO support to your PHP

Error: Exception: Required PDO class (database) not found - please add PDO support to your PHP. (in /home/elmode90/public_html/jewelrybythesea.com/wire/core/ProcessWire.php line 186)

Any ideas? I am pretty upset by this....

[adrian]

I am not sure what version of PW you were running before, but the current stable requires PHP version 5.3.8 or newer with PDO database support. That error is saying that you don't have PDO support. So you will need to correct that (your host should be able to deal with that for you), or you will need to revert to an older version of PW that worked with mysqli.

Best of luck sorting it out.

[teppo]

Sorry to hear that your site got hacked, Svet, and hope you can get this sorted without too much unnecessary pain!

If you don't mind, and if it doesn't contain any information that is confidential / potentially harmful to you, It would be interesting to hear what exactly went wrong there?

Your host not having PDO enabled by default makes me wonder if they've got everything else set up properly. While one can still compile PHP without PDO support, that alone sounds like a very bad idea. Unless your host is taking proper care of keeping everything up to date and (first and foremost) secure, you might want to check out other alternatives.