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Admin Tools

#25802 GeoIP update causes white screen

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
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Admin Tools version
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Latest post by dlb on Thursday, 04 August 2016 17:52 CDT

Dan1980
Hi guys,

Just update Joomla to 3.6.1 and Admin Tools to 4.0.1, I went to update GeoIP and got the white-screen-of-death.

Am able to just revisit the /administrator URL and still get access to everything. But just can't seem to update GeoIP at all.

Have searched old tickets and have made sure I checked in the System Information page, PHP Info option, that both option allow_url_fopen and cURL support are enabled (and they're definitely enabled)

Any ideas on why this is happening?

Cheers,
Daniel

supportbot
Hello,

This is an automatic reply to a common question we detected in your ticket.

If you are using Admin Tools 4.0.0 or any of its beta / RC pre-release versions you must update manually to Admin Tools 4.0.1 or later.

Up to date information on this issue AND the fix can be found in our announcement. Please follow the instructions on that link. It contains all the information we can provide on this issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.

If the instructions did not work for you please reply back to your ticket on our site, not by email, and let us know what you tried already (the more details you give the better).
 I am a bot, not a human. I am here to help you.

Dan1980
Hi supportbot ;-)

Nope, the auto-reply isn't addressing the issue.

Am already running 4.0.1 (and I manually installed it correctly as per instructions).

This issue is to go with GeoIP not updating correctly from within Admin Tools. I get the white-screen-of-(sort-of)-death-(kind-of) when trying to update GeoIP

cheers,
Daniel

dlb
Actually, I've seen that support bot be right twice. The Dropbox support bot has not been right yet. Ah, technology...

That is an odd combination. The GeoIP plugin is a separate installation, so I can't see why updating Admin Tools would affect it. You can download and reinstall it, but I don't think that will help.

Let's install Admin Tools 4.0.1 twice, back to back, without doing anything in between. That trick will usually fix a partial installation or update. I'm thinking that is more likely than something wrong with GeoIP itself.


Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist


us.gifEnglish: native


Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!


????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

Dan1980
Thanks Dale.

Nope, didn't work unfortunately.

Installed 4.0.1 and then once again. Went into Admin Tools and tried to update GeoIP ... same problem = white screen :-(

dlb
OK, we'll have to do it the hard way.

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.

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.


Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist


us.gifEnglish: native


Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!


????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

Dan1980
Thank you for that extremely comprehensive reply.

I tried renaming .htaccess but still got the white-screen.

So I've had a look at the error-logs and discovered this:

[Thu Aug 04 16:23:02 2016] [warn] [client ##.###.##.###] mod_fcgid: stderr: PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 19267425 bytes) in /var/www/vhosts/##########/httpdocs/libraries/joomla/filesystem/file.php on line 435, referer: http://############/administrator/index.php?option=com_admintools


I've checked System Info > PHP Info and the memory_limit is set to 32M

I would have thought that that was fairly standard. Should I request an increase to the 32M? This host is excellent and I have direct access to the sys-admin and can basically request a change to anything I want as they are business partners.

What do you suggest?

Many Thanks,
Daniel

dlb
32 is a little on the low side these days. Joomla! itself takes about 20 to load, then you have all your plugins and Admin Tools trying to load in what is left. 64 would be a much more comfortable limit if you can get it.


Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist


us.gifEnglish: native


Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!


????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

Dan1980
Perfect! Thank you. That worked.

dlb
You're welcome!


Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist


us.gifEnglish: native


Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!


????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

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