Cannot connect to the database

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Fluidetom
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Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Mon Feb 26, 2007 2:57 pm

Hi all,

I've posted another message, on the french forum joomlafacile.org, but without any replies for the last week I'm posting something here as I'm really stuck with this problem.

I've setup a website with Joomla (http://www.airlibre.eu). I spent some time to configure it the way I wanted, I also made some slight modifications to the CSS. Anyway after all these changes, the website was working fine under IE7 and FF2.0 and I was happy...

I stopped working on the site for a couple of days because I had other things to do. When I went back on the site to add an article, I got the message "Site not available. Cannot connect to the database". The weird thing is that I DID NOT CHANGE ANYTHING since my last intervention. So I thought it was an issue with my provider. I've posted a message over there, but I have other website using PHP and they are all running fine. I double checked already the details in configuration.php, and everything is correct (I didn't change anything so ...)

Anyway I'm stuck now with this message. I can't connect neither to the front nor backend. All files and folders are reachable via FTP.

Would anyone know what I could do to troubleshoot this?

Tx in advance for your help

Have a nice day

Chouf
Last edited by Fluidetom on Wed Feb 28, 2007 11:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Tonie » Mon Feb 26, 2007 3:01 pm

The number corresponds to an error message, the meaning can be found here.

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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Mon Feb 26, 2007 3:11 pm

Hi Tonie,

Tx for the super quick answer.
I know it's in french, but if you have a look at http://www.airlibre.eu, you'll see there's no error code displayed.
Last edited by Fluidetom on Mon Feb 26, 2007 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Tonie » Mon Feb 26, 2007 5:17 pm

What is the value of $mosConfig_offline in configuration.php? This value should be set to 0.

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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:55 pm

Hi again,

yep the value is as follow: $mosConfig_offline = '0';

Really I have no clue on what the cause of this issue is ???
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Mon Feb 26, 2007 10:37 pm

Ok some news, but still this is so weird.
I had a look via FTP to my files.
I emptied the cache folder (cache was activated).
I also saw that I had a file index.php and index2.php. I thought this was weird so I renamed index.php into index3.php.
Suddenly, I was able to see the tree structure and all the files on the server (normal behaviour I suppose).
As it didn't help, I renamed index3.php back to index.php. Refreshed the website and I now have another message  ???
How is that possible? 2 minutes ago it was "Cannot connect to db" and now it says "Page not available, Please make another choice in the main menu".

I'm also suddenly able to access the Backend. But this doesn't help me much as I have no clue what to do to fix this issue.

Anyone would have a clue what's happening here  :'(

Tx in advance
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by AdventureBear » Wed Feb 28, 2007 4:29 am

Is it possible that your host in doing routine database backups or maintainance could have changed the name of your database?  Check the config file and you will fidn a database name and a username/password to access your database.  Double check this against the database name when you log into your host site.  Using Cpanel, I can see my SQL database names.
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:50 am

Hi AdventureBear,

Tx for your help.
I don't think the problem is with the db as I'm now able to connect to the backend without any problem.
As explained eabove, the problem I'm facing now is that nothing is displayed on the frontend except a messahe stating "Page not available, please make another selection in the main menu". But the text is formatted and the page background is the one I made; so the stylesheet is being use. I'm wondering if it couldn't be an issue with some permissions on a module or on a menu.
I triple-checked in the backend and all module and menu are set to access "Public". I also have 2 articles on the main page. But only the message "page not available...." is displayed.

I also checked the name of the db and everything is fine. I can access the db via my provider's control panel and see all tables. i've reset the password just in case of and modified the configuration.php with this new one. Same message appears.

Still as stuck as before.
:(
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Wizzie » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:57 am

You might want to try Joomla Diagnostics http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... ,99999999/,  it is a really useful tool to check that all of the files have been correctly uploaded http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,53052.0.html

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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:20 am

Hi Wizzie,

Thanks a lot for this.
I ran this tool and OMG, the error list is long  :(
See http://www.airlibre.eu/diagnostics.php or...

Code: Select all

Compair file hashes against original
Error Filename Type 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/globals.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/index.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/index2.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_admin/admin.admin.html.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_admin/admin.admin.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_banners/admin.banners.html.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_banners/admin.banners.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_banners/toolbar.banners.html.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_categories/admin.categories.html.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_categories/admin.categories.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_categories/toolbar.categories.html.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_checkin/admin.checkin.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_config/admin.config.html.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_config/admin.config.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_contact/admin.contact.html.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_contact/contact.xml File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_contact/contact_items.xml File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_contact/toolbar.contact.html.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_content/admin.content.html.php File is corrupted or has been altered 
WARNING /home/chouf/www/airlibreEU/administrator/components/com_content/admin.content.php File is corrupted or has been altered 

[...]

Created by Adam van Dongen - Joomla Diagnostics     © 2006 Adam van Dongen
But as I'm using a French copy of Joomla, don't you think the hashes will be different anyway?
Ok, just to make sure, I'll restore all files from last backup I took.

I'll let you know the outcome.

FluideTom
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Wed Feb 28, 2007 11:23 am

Yeeehaaaa  :D website is back online.
I've restored all files from a backup of two weeks ago and after updating the configuration.php with the new pwd, it's back!!
But as you can see the Joomla Diagnostics still gives me a lot of issue (see file enclosed). I suppose this is because I have the official French copy of Joomla...

Anyway, I'm so glad it's now back on line. Tx Wizzie  :-* and all the other for your help.

BUT, I'm still wondering what can cause file corruption issue like this?
Did anybody experience the same kind of issue? Why would this happen (error from my side, hacking...)?

Have all a nice day
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by AdventureBear » Wed Feb 28, 2007 5:34 pm

it seems to be working nicely now, what did you do?
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:52 pm

AdventureBear wrote: it seems to be working nicely now, what did you do?
Hi AdventureBear,

As explained above, I took a backup from 2 weeks ago (taken by my hosting cy), and just replaced all files in my "active" directory with all files from the backup. I did not touch anything from the db (even though I have a backup too).
It's working fine but I still have no clue on what happened. I'd like to understand not to have the same kind of problem in the future.
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by morvenwestfield » Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:33 am

I am having a very similar problem, and I'm clueless as to what happened. I had made some minor changes to my web site tonight -- to a calendar entry. I was just going to look at it now before going to bed and I couldn't bring up the web site. I got the "Site unavailable" with an error code of 2.

I used my hosting account to try to log onto the mySQL server and got an error of 1040 -- too many connections.

I saw your note about $mosConfig_offline needing to be 0. I used FileZilla to get to the file, and yes, it was set to 1. So I changed it to 0.

Now I'm getting:

This site is down for maintenance.
Please check back again soon.

I have NOT changed the password.  Oh, wait. I just remembered something else I did, or was going to do. I was going to change the global SEF thingie (sorry, but it's late and I can't remember the exact names) to allow SEF-friendly links. I went to the Global Config page, checked the box that allows me to overwrite the config file (because I always forget to, so now I check it FIRST), looked at the SEF setting, realized it was already set, and then... Well, I either cancelled, or logged out. I was doing a couple of things at once and that was a few hours ago.

I called the hosting provider (GoDaddy) and they were very polite, but said that mySQL is something that they provide as a service to the customer and they can't get in there and troubleshoot.

Argggh! Help!!!

Any suggestions? I did take a backup before I went to look at the SEF thing, but I wouldn't know how/where to upload it. I used the JoomlaPack component to do the backup.

Thanks in advance!

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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by morvenwestfield » Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:51 am

Arggh! This is strange. It just came back! I have no idea why. I had the site up in a browser so that I could copy down the error message, and now it's back. I can even log in to the admin area.

Anyone have any idea why this would have happened? I'd like to prevent it from happening again.

Morven

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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Thu Mar 01, 2007 7:45 am

Hi morven,

Man this looks also like a weird issue.  ???
This worries me a bit as if nobody knows why this kind of thing happens, I will always have in the back of my head the fact that Joomla is not 100% reliable (which is kind of not good for a website).

For your current problem, I'm afradi I can't really help as I'm a Joomla newbie and don't know PHP.
On the other hand, I also used JoomlaPack to take a back of my website. Here's what I found on the restore process:

main website: http://forge.joomla.org/sf/projects/joomlapack
JoomlaPack is a J! component that enables you to take a full backup of your site (files and database), creating a single archive that can be deployed on any server, just like the Joomla! distribution archive. It even includes a slightly modified version of the Joomla! installer!
In order to restore the backed up site, all you have to do is to uncompress the archive on your server and navigate to the installation directory, in the standard Joomla! installation fashion. This means that a backupyou create on one host can be restored on a different host without much more hassle than updating database preferences!
I also found this topic which looks interesting: http://forge.joomla.org/sf/discussion/d ... t.topc5978

Good luck!
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by morvenwestfield » Thu Mar 01, 2007 3:30 pm

It gets even MORE strange...

I just got a chance to check my site this morning. It's okay. So, I type http://www.joomla.org, it says UNAVAILABLE!

I reloaded the page, though, and it came back.

Is this a Joomla problem rather than a problem with my particular site?

Thanks for the URL. I'll check it out.

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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by morvenwestfield » Thu Mar 01, 2007 4:20 pm

I have been trying to remember what I've changed in the last few days and the only thing I can think of is that a day or two before, I configured Acajoom to work with Community Builder. It's not working the way I want it to -- it has the newsletters checked by default, and I told it NOT to do that.

Fluidetom, do you have either Community Builder or Acajoom installed?

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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by morvenwestfield » Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:52 pm

I just found something, though I don't know if this explains the problem connecting to the database.

I just looked at my site again, this time in Internet Explorer, and noticed that it said there were errors on the page.

For this site http://www.harvestshadows.biz/, it said:

                   Line 169, character 49, expected ')', code 0

That area of the page was a mouseover for the General News checkbox that you see under "Subscribe" on the bottom left of my page.

I noticed that the mouseover wasn't working for that one, or the one above it (Appearances), but that it DID work for the first one, Book Releases. The difference was that Book Releases did not have any apostrophes in the text! It looked like it was handling the apostrophes well -- it used the ampersand code equivalent -- but, just to be sure, I removed the apostrophes.

Now I can load the page without any errors AND the mouseovers work! I'm using Acajoom 1.1.5 and I will post this on their forum, but I just wondered if this would be anything that could cause or contribute to the database connection problem. It doesn't seem like it could, but I know absolutely nothing about mySQL, so I thought I'd ask.

Morven
Last edited by morvenwestfield on Thu Mar 01, 2007 6:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Sat Mar 03, 2007 12:05 am

morvenwestfield wrote:Fluidetom, do you have either Community Builder or Acajoom installed?
nope sorry I do not have these components installed.
on the other hand I found back a PDF explaining how to use Joomlapack if you're still interested... it's 430Ko so I can't attach oit to this message, but you can find it on the homepage of Joomlapack: http://forge.joomla.org/sf/projects/joomlapack
for the rest of your issues, I'm sorry not being able to help. I'm still a big newbie with PHP and Joomal in general...

good luck!
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Wizzie » Fri Mar 16, 2007 11:29 pm

@Fluidetom IMPORTANT: Please delete the You might want to try Joomla Diagnostics files from your server as soon as you have finished using this extension.

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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Sat Mar 17, 2007 12:57 am

Wizzie wrote: @Fluidetom IMPORTANT: Please delete the You might want to try Joomla Diagnostics files from your server as soon as you have finished using this extension.
you mean the diagonistc.txt file ? sorry I don't understand
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Wizzie » Sat Mar 17, 2007 3:22 am

I believe that there are two files in the Joomla Diagnostics extension, please locate these files and remove them from the server once you have finished running the diagnostics.

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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by Fluidetom » Sat Mar 17, 2007 9:36 pm

ok done.
the two files (diagnostics.php and joomla_1.0.12.txt) wer still there...  :-\
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Re: Cannot connect to the database

Post by kozaki » Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:54 pm

realy just a few words as i just had the same issue / message localy
i checked that $mosConfig_offline" was on "0" in configuration.php.
Then realized i booted on my x86_64 system this mornin, he he... First thought i'm a dumb as that LAMP copy is for 32-bit OS...
*but* this is definitively not as simple, as already quoted:

while on this system i checked my other local joomla dev-sites (all are 1.0.15, with/without VirtueMart). Some work, some don't:
- 2 joomla 1.0.15 (of which one with VM) print the message (same as Fluidetom; frontend+backend),
- 3 joomla 1.0.15 (of which one with VM) works flawlessly (frontend+backend),
- a local small Thelia site (ecommerce) works as well.

have saved phpinfo of one of the workin joomla local site in case someone is interested.

wth is going on ? I'd like to know in case this happend on a prod site :-[


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