System dashboard empty on Joomla 4.1.3 upgrade from 3.10 Topic is solved

[vincentkoevoets]

Hello everyone,

So I followed the guide on how to migrate to Joomla 4. Everything went very well, I uninstalled all the extensions that were not compatible, checked the database, cleared the cache and all the stuff in the recycle bin, and started the installation. No problem, afterwards I am greeted with the new Joomla 4 interface. Database is intact, not even repairs are needed. But now comes the fun part: the system dashboard is completely blank. Everything else seems to work, but the system dashboard is just.. not there. No errors in the logs, nothing. What am I doing wrong?

Schermafbeelding 2022-05-14 112759.png

[ceford]

Your system dashboard is not in English and there is an extra Help label. What happens if you login in English?

Did you install a language pack for J4?

Open administrator/logs/joomla_update.php with a text editor and see what it says, especially down at the bottom. Try the Forum Post Assistant.

[Per Yngve Berg]

They are modules that can be added in Module Manager.

[vincentkoevoets]

Ah right, I see now I was poorly prepared. I will try the FPA and report back.
I did install a language pack in 3.10, should I disable that before upgrading?
And yes, I did try some things in the 4.0 system dashboard, resulting in the extra help button. I'm restoring a backup at the moment to 3.10, and after that I will try the whole process again.

[Per Yngve Berg]

Did you check that the System Dashboard Module is published?

[vincentkoevoets]

Allright here we are. Did the whole update process again. There is an error now in the joomla_update.php log file, see below in second post because of number of characters limitation. I searched in the modules for System Dashboard, but it's not even installed let alone published. This seems strange right?
Well I hope you can give me some pointers.

Schermafbeelding 2022-05-14 om 21.47.03.png

Schermafbeelding 2022-05-14 om 22.05.04.png

FPA output:

Joomla! Instance :: Joomla! 4.1.3-Stable (Kuamini) 10-May-2022
Joomla! Configured :: Yes | Writable (644) |
Configuration Options :: Offline: false | SEF: true | SEF Suffix: false | SEF ReWrite: true | .htaccess/web.config: Yes | GZip: false | Cache: false | CacheTime: 15 | CacheHandler: file | CachePlatformPrefix: false | FTP Layer: false | Proxy: false | LiveSite: | Session lifetime: 90 | Session handler: none | Shared sessions: false | SSL: 2 | Error Reporting: maximum | Site Debug: false | Language Debug: false | Default Access: Public | Unicode Slugs: false | dbConnection Type: mysqli | PHP Supports J! 4.1.3: Yes | Database Supports J! 4.1.3: Yes | Database Credentials Present: Yes |

Host Configuration :: OS: Linux | OS Version: 4.18.0-348.20.1.lve.1.el8.x86_64 | Technology: x86_64 | Web Server: Apache/2 | Encoding: gzip, deflate, br | System TMP Writable: Yes | Free Disk Space : 125.49 GiB |

PHP Configuration :: Version: 7.4.29 | PHP API: litespeed | Session Path Writable: Yes | Display Errors: 0 | Error Reporting: 32767 | Log Errors To: | Last Known Error: | Register Globals: | Magic Quotes: | Safe Mode: | Allow url fopen: 1 | Open Base: | Uploads: 1 | Max. Upload Size: 64M | Max. POST Size: 8M | Max. Input Time: -1 | Max. Execution Time: 30 | Memory Limit: 128M

Database Configuration :: Version: 5.5.5-10.3.34-MariaDB-log-cll-lve (Client:mysqlnd 7.4.29) | Database Size: 8.80 MiB | #of Tables with config prefix:  126 | #of other Tables:  8 | User Privileges : GRANT ALL

PHP Extensions :: Core (7.4.29) | date (7.4.29) | libxml (7.4.29) | openssl (7.4.29) | pcre (7.4.29) | sqlite3 (7.4.29) | zlib (7.4.29) | bz2 (7.4.29) | calendar (7.4.29) | ctype (7.4.29) | curl (7.4.29) | hash (7.4.29) | filter (7.4.29) | ftp (7.4.29) | gettext (7.4.29) | gmp (7.4.29) | SPL (7.4.29) | iconv (7.4.29) | pcntl (7.4.29) | readline (7.4.29) | Reflection (7.4.29) | session (7.4.29) | standard (7.4.29) | shmop (7.4.29) | SimpleXML (7.4.29) | mbstring (7.4.29) | tokenizer (7.4.29) | xml (7.4.29) | litespeed () | i360 (6.2.2) | bcmath (7.4.29) | dom (20031129) | fileinfo (7.4.29) | gd (7.4.29) | intl (7.4.29) | json (7.4.29) | exif (7.4.29) | mysqlnd (mysqlnd 7.4.29) | mysqli (7.4.29) | PDO (7.4.29) | pdo_mysql (7.4.29) | pdo_sqlite (7.4.29) | Phar (7.4.29) | posix (7.4.29) | soap (7.4.29) | sockets (7.4.29) | sodium (7.4.29) | xmlreader (7.4.29) | xmlwriter (7.4.29) | xsl (7.4.29) | zip (1.15.6) | ionCube Loader (11.0.0) | Zend Engine (3.4.0) |
Potential Missing Extensions ::
Disabled Functions :: system | exec | shell_exec | passthru | proc_get_status | proc_nice | proc_terminate | dl | popen | pcntl_exec |

Switch User Environment :: PHP CGI: No | Server SU: No | PHP SU: No | Potential Ownership Issues: No

Core Folders :: images/ (755) | components/ (755) | modules/ (755) | plugins/ (755) | language/ (755) | templates/ (755) | cache/ (755) | logs/ (---) | tmp/ (755) | administrator/components/ (755) | administrator/modules/ (755) | administrator/language/ (755) | administrator/templates/ (755) | administrator/logs/ (755) |

Elevated Permissions (First 10) ::

Database statistics :: Uptime: 203553 | Threads: 32 | Questions: 71532417 | Slow queries: 63 | Opens: 659002 | Flush tables: 213 | Open tables: 2048 | Queries per second avg: 351.419 |

Components :: Site ::
Core ::
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3rd Party::

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3rd Party::

Libraries ::
Core ::
3rd Party:: file_fof30 (3.7.4) ? |

Plugins ::
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Templates :: Site :: vincent_template (1.0.0) 1 | cassiopeia (1.0) 1 |
Templates :: Admin :: atum (1.0) 1 |

[vincentkoevoets]

I put joomla_update.php output in a pastebin.
https://pastebin.com/gBaKhKKF

[vincentkoevoets]

See post above, too much characters so pastebin instead.
So this post can be deleted.

[Per Yngve Berg]

Your screenshot is showing Extensions Manager, not Module Manager.

Max. Upload Size: 64M | Max. POST Size: 8M

Post size must be larger than Upload size.

[ceford]

Your update log shows the installation aborted only part way through the sql statements. You need to find out why #__contact_details is missing the created column. If that is missing, what else is missing?

See this for an example completed update log:

https://github.com/ceford/joomla-notes/ ... update.php

[vincentkoevoets]

Your screenshot is showing Extensions Manager, not Module Manager.

Max. Upload Size: 64M | Max. POST Size: 8M

Post size must be larger than Upload size.

Okay, post size is fixed, is now larger than upload size.
I was indeed showing you the Extension manager, here is a screenshot of the Module manager, with a screenshot of the edit menu for Admin Menu. Also, when I try to save any changes, I get a Mysql error but maybe that is to be expected with the Mysql error on upgrading? Changes made seem to be saved regardless of this error.

Schermafbeelding 2022-05-15 om 07.48.18.png

Schermafbeelding 2022-05-15 om 07.51.23.png

Schermafbeelding 2022-05-15 om 07.51.37.png

[vincentkoevoets]

Your update log shows the installation aborted only part way through the sql statements. You need to find out why #__contact_details is missing the created column. If that is missing, what else is missing?

See this for an example completed update log:

https://github.com/ceford/joomla-notes/ ... update.php

Yes, I saw that too. I don't know why the columns are missing, before upgrading I fixed the database and no errors showed up. After upgrading, I have database errors indeed as shown in the screenshot. Now as for what is missing, is there a way to know? There aren't any other errors, clicking the Update structure button does not do anything and I wouldn't know even where to begin to check the database integrity manually.

Schermafbeelding 2022-05-15 om 07.56.14.png

[ceford]

Look in administrator/components/com_admin/sql/updates/mysql where you will find the files mentioned in your screenshot. Open each to see the sql command that changed table structure. Using phpMyAdmin, apply that command, either by copy/paste the sql, remembering to change the table prefix, or just change the table structure yourself.

[vincentkoevoets]

Look in administrator/components/com_admin/sql/updates/mysql where you will find the files mentioned in your screenshot. Open each to see the sql command that changed table structure. Using phpMyAdmin, apply that command, either by copy/paste the sql, remembering to change the table prefix, or just change the table structure yourself.

Well, I went down the rabbit hole, and did as you suggested. I executed all the queries from all the sql files, and there were lots of things wrong with the database. Especially the #__contact_details table missed about 5 columns.
After going through this (and what a job it was...), all seems to work well now. The System dashboard is completely filled, I can check in everything again, and the Home dashboard now shows what it's supposed to.

Now, of course this raises a lot of questions. It seems that in the process from 3.10 to 4.1.3 some sql queries fail. I think the problem is that only this little line in joomla_update.php log file indicates that something is wrong:
"End of SQL updates - INCOMPLETE."
After that the file happily reports "Update to version 4.1.3 is complete.", while it is most certainly not the case. I'm no expert, but in case (some of) the sql queries fail, the update can never be completed, which was proven in my case. The result is some kind of limbo between the two versions of Joomla.

Am I the first one to report this problem? And of course, what did I do wrong? I toroughly followed the manual and went forward really under the impression I was ready to upgrade.

[sozzled]

Would it not be more appropriate delete the current—partially updated, but broken—website (i.e delete all the files in the file system and DROP site's associated database tables) and revert to J! 3.10.whatever-it-was (when things were "working") but using the backup that was made earlier and fix any database issues in J! 3.10 before attempting to migrate to J! 4.x?

It's possible, as @ceford suggested, to patch the broken J! 4 _contact_details table, at this point but that's just one table needing repair; are there others? Even if one repaired that table, would that fix the issue with the empty dashboard? I have my doubts. One could repair one broken table but is that all one has to do? Does repairing the _contact_details table restore the dashboard functionality?

I'm interested to know what happens when the update/migration procedure hits an obstacle, viz.

Your update log shows the installation aborted only part way through the SQL statements.

If the update procedure stops at that point what else hasn't been processed?

Perhaps, because the OP has now repaired one broken table my questions are moot.

Now, of course this raises a lot of questions. It seems that in the process from 3.10 to 4.1.3 some sql queries fail. I think the problem is that only this little line in joomla_update.php log file indicates that something is wrong:
"End of SQL updates - INCOMPLETE."
After that the file happily reports "Update to version 4.1.3 is complete.", while it is most certainly not the case. I'm no expert, but in case (some of) the sql queries fail, the update can never be completed, which was proven in my case. The result is some kind of limbo between the two versions of Joomla.

You're quite right: this raises a few questions. Even though the file joomla_update.php states that something was incomplete, the procedure "happily" ends with the message that the update to version 4.1.3 is complete. As you say, the actual situation is that you're left in some kind of limbo not knowing whether (or why) something didn't work.

Because you don't know whether the update was completed successfully (because you're getting messages about the database structure) people scratch their heads and wonder what else they need to do? I don't know the answer(s) to these questions, sorry.

[vincentkoevoets]

@sozzled I'm not sure about the first part of your post, but the latter part was my point exactly. And I have at least one answer to one of your questions: I did at first only repair the #__contact_details table, but the problems remained. So I went through all of the sql files only to discover there was much more broken in the database than was indicated by the error in my screenshot above. It seems like after the notification of mysql processing incomplete, all the remaining sql files were not processed at all. With the before mentioned limbo as a result.

[sozzled]

Thanks for your reply. The first part of my previous post related to the efficacy of repairing one table as a means of restoring the system dashboard to its full functionality. As you wrote, there were "lots of things wrong with the database"—and it may not be necessary to list in detail all of those things. In my [somewhat limited] experience in going from one major version of J! to another, I've been as thorough as one could possibly be to check that there were no database problems before starting the migration; I say "somewhat limited": I've only done this a hundred times or so. Again, in my experience, if I've encountered database problems—on rare occasions—after migrating. When those things happen, I've restored the website to its former working state (by trashing all the files and its associated database tables) and examine the original, pre-converted database tables. On reviewing the database—before I tried any major migration— I've usually found problems; if you fix the problems before you start the update then the update should go through smoothly.

As I say, that's my somewhat limited experience.

But you're right. If you get a message that [basically] says, "Congratulations", but your website looks like a dog's breakfast then there's a lack of congruence, isn't there? I wouldn't get too obsessed about why things happen the way they sometimes do. Software isn't perfect: there's an old saying, "If builders built buildings the way that programmers build programs then the first woodpecker that comes along would destroy civilisation as we know it."

I'm please to read that you resolved your problem. Best wishes and good luck for the future.

[ceford]

I did at first only repair the #__contact_details table, but the problems remained. So I went through all of the sql files only to discover there was much more broken in the database than was indicated by the error in my screenshot above.

I am impressed that you went through all of the sql files. I was rather hoping that fixing the problems reported in the screenshot would allow the Database Maintenance utility to do the rest. What about the queries that change data content?

[vincentkoevoets]

Well, below is exactly the point I'm having some trouble with. The pre-converted database of the 3.10 installation was fine, according to the Database tab in Joomla itself. And there weren't any other errors, so how would one even begin to review the database? This isn't mentioned in the migration guide, so I never even thought of doing it. If I even had a hint before upgrading that something was wrong with the database, I wouldn't have upgraded and cleared out all the problems first, if I knew were to begin.

When those things happen, I've restored the website to its former working state (by trashing all the files and its associated database tables) and examine the original, pre-converted database tables. On reviewing the database—before I tried any major migration— I've usually found problems; if you fix the problems before you start the update then the update should go through smoothly.

But as you say, my problem is fixed now so we can look forward again and get used to the beautiful Joomla 4 look and feel. I'll mark @ceford 's post as the solution because it has indeed fixed my problem, but I think there is some work to be done still on the upgrading process.

[vincentkoevoets]

I am impressed that you went through all of the sql files. I was rather hoping that fixing the problems reported in the screenshot would allow the Database Maintenance utility to do the rest. What about the queries that change data content?

Hmm, that would have been a good one to try after fixing the #__contact_details table, but I never thought of that. It was quite a big job going through all the sql files, but it gave me a good insight on the sql queries that are run during an upgrade.
What do you mean queries that change data content? As far as I could tell all the queries are only meant to change the database structure, not the data stored in it, apart from some changes in modules. But it was a lot of sql, so I might have missed some things. But my site and administrator panel are working fine so I'd say nothing important in terms of data was lost or changed.

[ceford]

What do you mean queries that change data content?

It was the 335 changes that did not alter structure and were skipped that caught my eye. I assumed they changed content. I don't know if that is significant.