27 February 2013, 6:12

Hello,

I just tried to upgrade our mahara site https://eportfolio.sevengardens.net/  from 1.4.1 to 1.6.3. Corresponding to the information on upgrades from 1.4 to 1.6 I found in the forum that should not be a problem.

The site is hosted by our regular ISP.

The db coallition has been proved as utf8 general. I started the upgrade with /admin/upgrade.php  and the database-upgrade was finished as successful.

But after clicking in the gui for the next step the browser window doesn't show anything. Going back to the eportfolio start page didn't help. Refreshing the site by CTRL + R or CTRL + F5 didn't help. I lost the connection to the site.

I restored database and files and tried the upgrade via /admin/cli/upgrade.php but it ended up with the same empty window.

Did anybody recognize a problem like this?

Thanks in advance for your assistance

Joerg

07 March 2013, 13:56

Hi Joerg,

Can you check in your web server's error logs to see if there are any messages from when you try to access the site? (Or ask your host to check?)

You could also try adding this to the end of your config.php file, which will cause error messages to be printed to the screen rather than just to the logs. However, if you're seeing a blank screen it probably means that the script is crashing before it can execute (due to, for instance, a syntax error), in which case this won't show any additional info to you. But it's worth a shot.

$cfg->log_dbg_targets     = LOG_TARGET_SCREEN | LOG_TARGET_ERRORLOG;
$cfg->log_info_targets    = LOG_TARGET_SCREEN | LOG_TARGET_ERRORLOG;
$cfg->log_warn_targets    = LOG_TARGET_SCREEN | LOG_TARGET_ERRORLOG;
$cfg->log_environ_targets = LOG_TARGET_SCREEN | LOG_TARGET_ERRORLOG;
$cfg->perftofoot = true;

11 March 2013, 3:00

Hi Aaron,

thank you very much for your assistance.

First I tried to include your php-code into config.php. But after starting the upgrade-page I only got a white browser-window.

So I tried again an upgrade without adding the php-code, first from 1.4.1 to 1.5.8. The db-upgrade ran through but after clicking on "continue" again I got a white browser window.

After that I tried again with 1.4.1 to 1.6.3. The same...

But I was suprised when I reloaded the .../admin/upgrade.php page.

Here - and also when shortening the URL to /admin - I was able to login !?

I made some screenshots of the upgrade-page, the reloaded upgrade-page and the /admin-page. You find them here:

https://www.wuala.com/meymueh/Mahara/?key=8mSmuA6sqDjj

Any clue?

Regards

Joerg

11 March 2013, 17:57

Hi Joerg,

In that case it sounds like it's something on the "/index.php" page which is crashing (whereas the /admin/index.php and /admin/upgrade.php pages run fine).

A plain white screen generally indicates that the script is crashing before it's able to display anything. Check your web server's error logs. There should be a PHP error message there, which will tell you what line of what file it is crashing on.

Cheers,
Aaron

11 March 2013, 21:13

Hi Aaron,

thanks a lot!

I switched on the 'display error" function like our ISP described it and it found the problem:

After the db-upgrade and clicking on 'continue' it showed the 'Cannot redeclare plural_en_utf8...' error

The sollution for this problem I found in the mahara forum:

https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=4665

So I uncommented  (in the langconfig.php of all installed languages) the lines concerningn pluralfunction for example in the English langconfig.php the lines

$string['pluralrule'] = 'n != 1';
$string['pluralfunction'] = ;'plural_en_utf8';
function plural_en_utf8($n) {
    return (int) $n != 1;

And now it works, look here: https://eportfolio.sevengardens.net/

This seems to be a real problem with the 'pluralfunciton...'

Again I have to thank you very much for your urgent assistance!!!

Kind regards

Joerg

11 March 2013, 22:21

... sorry, I've been to quick with my reply.

Everything worked well I thought before I tried to edit a view and add a new textbox-blocktype.

I could add the blocktype into the view than, like in former mahara versions, the edit-screen for the textbox appeared but on a grey screen and I couldn't edit the blocktype.

Nothing happens, no possibilty to reload the page etc. The only way out of this was to go back to the last page.

There I recognized that the blocktype has been added to the view. But no chance to edit it.

This problem appeared with personal or group views.

Any clue?

Regards

Joerg

12 March 2013, 10:46

Hi Joerg,

The pop-up to edit a text box is Ajax-based, so it could be problem in the Javascript or it could be a problem with the server-side script that is passing info to Javascript. Here are my suggestions:

1. Clear your browser cache. Since you've just upgraded, it's possible you have an older version of the JS hanging around

2. Turn display_errors off in your php.ini. The ajax script view/blocks.json.php is supposed to return a json-encoded response to the Javascript, but if you've got display_errors on it may be printing a warning message which is invalid json, and that could be making the script fail

3. And if that doesn't work, check for Javascript error messages in your browser (in Firefox the best tool for this is probably Firebug), and check for PHP errors from view/blocks.json.php on your web server.

Cheers,
Aaron

12 March 2013, 11:25

Hm, that's strange. Do you have the latest version of all your language packs, from http://langpacks.mahara.org ?

12 March 2013, 23:37

Dear Aaron,

many thanks for your replies.

To solve the problems in a correct way I started the upgrade from scratch, which means that I installed 1.6.3 only with the original - and unchanged - English lang-pack and while using the config-file from the 1.4.1-installation.

1. The upgrade again ended in a white browser window. That problem again could be solved by uncommenting the lines concerning 'pluralforms' in the langconfig.php:

// Rule to choose from the language's plural forms.
// See the gettext manual, http://www.gnu.org/s/hello/manual/gettext/Plural-forms.html
// For language packs converted from PO format, the following strings and function will be
// automatically generated from the expression in the PO file's "Plural-Forms:" header.
$string['pluralrule'] = 'n != 1';
$string['pluralfunction'] = 'plural_en_utf8';
function plural_en_utf8($n) {
    return (int) $n != 1;
}

So I knew I had to change the langconfig-files of all the other langpacks to be installed. And that works...

2. You were right with your advice to switch of error-display. After I switched of and after clearing the browser-cache the blocktypes were shown in a normal and editable view.

Thank you very much. Now our mahara site https://eportfolio.sevengardens.net/ is runing in normal mode and I hope this posts can help other users!

Kind regards

Joerg