27 February 2012, 11:12

Hello, We have Mahara on Debian with Apache. When users go to our site they get this message in the browser:

Fatal error: Exception thrown without a stack frame in Unknown on line 0


In the Apache error logs we see lots of errors that look like this:

[Wed Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] [WAR] 85 (lib/errors.php:654) Failed to get a recordset: postgres7 error: [-1: ERROR: new row for relation "artefact" violates check constraint "artefact_check1"] in EXECUTE("INSERT INTO "artefact" ("id", "artefacttype", "owner", "ctime", "mtime", "atime", "title") VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)"), referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467
[Wed Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] [WAR] 85 (lib/errors.php:654) Command was: INSERT INTO "artefact" ("id", "artefacttype", "owner", "ctime", "mtime", "atime", "title") VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?) and values was (3432,city,68,2012-02-22 17:26:27,2012-02-22 17:26:27,2012-02-22 17:26:27,Wilkes-Barre, PA), referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467
[Wed Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] Call stack (most recent first):, referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467
[Wed Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] * log_message("Failed to get a recordset: postgres7 error: [-1: E...", 8, true, true) at /usr/share/mahara/lib/errors.php:90, referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467
[Wed Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] * log_warn("Failed to get a recordset: postgres7 error: [-1: E...") at /usr/share/mahara/lib/errors.php:654, referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467
[Wed Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] * SQLException->__construct("Failed to get a recordset: postgres7 error: [-1: E...") at /usr/share/mahara/lib/dml.php:1002, referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467
[Wed Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] * insert_record("artefact", object(stdClass), "id", true) at /usr/share/mahara/artefact/lib.php:321, referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467
[Wed Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] * ArtefactType->commit() at /usr/share/mahara/lib/user.php:230, referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467
[Wed Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] * set_profile_field("68", "city", "Wilkes-Barre, PA") at /usr/share/mahara/auth/xmlrpc/lib.php:387, referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467
[Wed Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] * AuthXmlrpc->import_user_settings(object(User), object(stdClass)) at /usr/share/mahara/auth/xmlrpc/lib.php:225, referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467
[Wed Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] * AuthXmlrpc->request_user_authorise("9e29e37ac852b4f5590ee4621b0aa6a81aa4dd78", "http://kings.mrooms2.net") at /usr/share/mahara/auth/xmlrpc/land.php:101, referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467

And This:

[Wed
Feb 22 17:26:27 2012] [error] [client 10.3.20.188] PHP Fatal error: Ignoring exception from ArtefactTypeCity::__destruct() while an exception is already active (Uncaught SQLException in /usr/share/mahara/lib/dml.php on line 1002) in /usr/share/mahara/auth/xmlrpc/lib.php on line 425, referer: http://kings.mrooms2.net/course/view.php?id=467

On that day, several things were changed on the server:
A backup cron job was implemented as found here: https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=687

The postgres password for the database was reset (it was lost) and the .pgpass files were created for the root user as suggested in the above link. Mahara has its own login credentials as far as I can tell (based on the config file).

Synaptic Package Manager was used to run all waiting updates (around 130 in total).

Any help in diagnosing this issue would be appreciated. This is a big problem for us.

27 February 2012, 13:06

Update:

I reverted to a snapshot done after the postgres/backup changes, but before the Synatpics updates.  It works now.

The problem was caused by the updates.  I used the Smart Update and chose not to over-write my existing PHP config file(s).

My update list includes the following packages that I believe could be relevant:

apache2 (from version 2.2.9-10+lenny8 to 2.2.9-10+lenny12)
apache2-doc (same versions as above)
apache2-mpm-preform (same versions as above)
apache2-utils (same versions as above)
apache2.2-comming (came versions as above)

libapache2-mod-php5 (from version 5.2.6.dfsg.1-1+lenny9 to 5.2.6.dfsg.1-1+lenny16)

libapr1 (from version 1.2.12-5+lenny2 to 1.2.12-5+lenny4)

mahara (from version 10.0.4-4+lenny6 to 1.0.4-4+lenny11)
mahara-apache2 (same versions as above)

php-pear (from version 5.2.6.dsfg.1-1+lenny9 to 5.2.6.dsfg.1-1+lenny16)
php5-cli (as versions as above)
php5-curl (same versions as above)
php5-common (same as above)
php5-gd (same as above)
php5-ldap (same as above)
php5-pgsql (same as above)
php5-xmlrpc (same as above)

postgresql (from version 8.3.12-0lenny1 to 8.3.16-0lenny1)
postgresql-8.3 (same)
postgresql-client (same)
postgresql-client-8.3 (same)
postgresql-contrib (same)
postgresql-contrib-8.3 (same)
postgresql-doc (same)
postgresql-doc-8.3 (same)

Do we have any idea why the updates would break Mahara?  I can't leave the server un-patched for too long before my security guy starts yelling at me.

27 February 2012, 22:35

Is there a reason for updating this way? I prefer to do a manual update by placing new code over top of existing.

28 February 2012, 8:42

I guess I had no reason to think the updates wouldn't work.

28 February 2012, 19:02

Good point.

 It's a small community though and doing manual updates might be your safest way that's all. Hope its going to work out for you.