Discuss Joomla! 4.3.0

[pe7er]

Here you can discuss about the release of Joomla 4.3.0

See Announcement: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1001197

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

As I’m banned from contributing I suggest someone seriously takes note that there are at least two serious issues with this release.

One will render your site offline about cookie errors if you are using the language switcher

One will stop you administrating your media if you don’t have fileinfo PHP module installed and enabled

Both could have been prevented with better testing

Full details on the @mysitesguru twitter.

[obuisard]

For those having the error:

Code: Select all

setcookie(): Expects exactly 3 arguments when argument #3 ($expires_or_options) is an array

For a temporary workaround:
Go to the 'language filter' system plugin and change the cookie lifetime parameter from 'Year' to 'Session'.

For those having the error:

Code: Select all

0 - Class "Joomla\Plugin\System\GuidedTours\Extension\GuidedTours" not found

Delete

Code: Select all

administrator/cache/autoload_psr4.php

manually. The file will be re-created automatically.
Make sure the /cache folder is writable.

For those having the error:

Code: Select all

Property 'mime-type' of argument 'item' of event onFetchMediaItems has a wrong item.

Enable the fileinfo PHP extension.

[toivo]

Localhost and remote 4.2.9 sites updated smoothly to Joomla 4.3.0. Thank you to the teams and individuals who contributed to the release! The new feature Guided Tours looks good!

[gws]

Just updated 3 sites to test and all seems fine. Thanks to the team.

[gersnet]

Unfortunately, something related to the update means I can no longer login to my site - obtaining the following error:

JAuthentication: :authenticate: Failed to load plugin:

Bizarrely, I tried uploading a backup of the site (pre-update) and I get the same error.

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

Unfortunately, something related to the update means I can no longer login to my site - obtaining the following error:

JAuthentication: :authenticate: Failed to load plugin:

Bizarrely, I tried uploading a backup of the site (pre-update) and I get the same error.

I have now had multiple reports of this.

[gersnet]

I have now had multiple reports of this.

Glad it's not just me. Do you have any advice on solving the issue?

Many thanks!

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

Not at this time. Not had time to debug the issue but it’s happening a lot on a lot of sites according to my mailbox

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

You could try the standard "turn it off and turn it back on" approach for Joomla 4 which is to manually delete administrator/cache/autoload_psr4.php and see if that fixes your problem?

[gersnet]

You could try the standard "turn it off and turn it back on" approach for Joomla 4 which is to manually delete administrator/cache/autoload_psr4.php and see if that fixes your problem?

I actually had to do that for another site which solved the Guided Tours issue. That's now working OK.

For the other site, I didn't experience that problem but it's no longer working despite cancelling the upgrade and attempting to reinstall an earlier backup.

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

Well if you want me to debug it FOR FREE and provide the technical reason and possible solution I can -

Please send me your site details using the SECURE form (which is over SSL and stored in an encrypted format) using the link below and I will take a look as soon as I can for you.

https://fix.mysites.guru/now

THIS IS NOT ADVERTISING MY SERVICES, this is trying to get to the bottom of the Joomla 4.3.0 screw ups.

[gersnet]

Well if you want me to debug it FOR FREE and provide the technical reason and possible solution I can -

Please send me your site details using the SECURE form (which is over SSL and stored in an encrypted format) using the link below and I will take a look as soon as I can for you.

https://fix.mysites.guru/now

THIS IS NOT ADVERTISING MY SERVICES, this is trying to get to the bottom of the Joomla 4.3.0 screw ups.

Done - appreciate the help!

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

ok I know what's wrong - let me try to understand this - one moment...

[xtremo54]

Glad I held back from updating......many thanks to Phil for the info!

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

So I have not got to the bottom of the Login issue yet, only having access to 2 sites at the moment, but there are consistancies and inconsistancies with both.

The fact is that the upgrade was attempted, but some files were NOT extracted, but then the cleanup script deleted the old plugins (expecting the new plugin to be extracted already). This leads to an inconsistant state.

Between 4.3.0-alpha2 to 4.3.0-alpha3 Joomla decided to (correctly) delete the authentication plugin files.

Evidenced in /administrator/components/com_admin/script.php

https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/bl ... .php#L6504

Your site doesnt have these files, they were deleted by the upgrade finalisation script (correctly)



What you should have is a new Services and a src folder for each authentication plugin - these are missing on every site I now have access to, that is reporting not being able to login.

What is a mystery is why you dont have the new Services and src folders in each of the authentication plugins. These are in the Joomla_4.3.0-Stable-Update_Package.zip and the Joomla_4.3.0-Stable-Full_Package.zip

I have checked the Apache Web log files for 2 sites.

One upgraded with the mySites.guru service, and one upgraded in the Joomla Admin Console (2 different customers, 2 different servers) and the Extraction of the Update files looks perfect, every response is a 200 and there are no 500 Internal Server Errors. The upgrade passage in time looks perfect according to the Apache log files.

Both servers have NOT hit their disk quota and have space available.

However on manual inspection of the files - comparison diffs with full md5 hashes using "a service that cannot be named", it appears that the extraction has stopped mid-way though and not extracted all the files from the zip file (or the zip files at the time were corrupt, or were missing files)

Examining the Joomla_4.3.0-Stable-Update_Package.zip file left on one of these sites, it contains the full set of files so this is NOT a source zip file packaging issue. I have inspected the zip files from the official sources and they match.

Which means something is going wrong with extracting the files from the zip file, without providing an error message, without logging an error message, and without a HTTP Internal Server error generated.

755 files were not overwritten with new versions from the zip.

The ONLY folders these 755 files are in are /plugins /media and /modules

The libraries, includes, templates and other folders that are not those three above were all correctly updated by the update.

THE WORKAROUND for this issue at the moment is to MANUALLY upload the WHOLE Joomla 4.3.0 files using FTP and then MANUALLY DELETE administrator/cache/autoload_psr4.php and then you should be able to login again - Then go to System -> Database and ensure all database tables are up to date (this also runs script.php if needed). This restores the missing files and is enough for you to get back into your site.

In Summary - on MANY sites - the full zip is not being extracted with the first symptom being no able to login, because the new authentication plugins are not being extracted and the old authentication plugins are (correctly) deleted by script.php leaving no way to login.

Until I get some more sample sites to investigate thats all I can offer at the moment

Kindest regards
Phil

[gersnet]

Really appreciate your help, Phil.

[gws]

Well done Phil.

[GillianBPP]

One will stop you administrating your media if you don’t have fileinfo PHP module installed and enabled

See https://docs.joomla.org/J4.x:Optional_T ... quirements under 'Image'

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

You think I did not know this?

It's not an "Optional" requirement any more. If you want to use media features like images you need php extension FileInfo installed so burying that information on an "optional" page is wrong.

The difference is that this has NEVER been a hard requirement before Joomla 4.3.0. You did not need the fileinfo module installed to administrate media, furthermore Joomla should NOT be displaying an technical error message that is totally unrelated to fileinfo and doesn't HELP its users to work out what they need to do.

Teeman tried and failed to get other gatekeepers to understand but the toxicity of the project stalled the PR.

-- https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/39777

There is now still an open issue regarding the messaging around this issue

-- https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/issues/39711

The fact is, "Error Property 'mime_type' of argument 'item' of event onFetchMediaItems has a wrong item. Valid: string" is far too technical an error message when "You need fileinfo PHP module installed to manage media" would be much more helpful to Joomla users.

Also, the link https://downloads.joomla.org/technical-requirements makes no mention of this HARD requirement, and the link to the Optional requirements https://docs.joomla.org/S:MyLanguage/Op ... quirements is a 404 error page after redirecting to https://docs.joomla.org/Optional_Technical_Requirements

[formfranska]

Phil, Thank you so much for all your investigations and information I’m so grateful I got to read this before attempting to update. I will hold off until there’s a new version with fixes for all these issues.

Would anyone have any news on when/if a new version is planned?

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

Would anyone have any news on when/if a new version is planned?

The Joomla project rarely shares its plans, even less so with me, never.

The official release schedule is here https://developer.joomla.org/roadmap.html it states Joomla 4.3.1 will be released on 25th April 2023. that is only one week after Joomla 4.3.0 which is crazy.

I doubt they will address these issues, other than adding to the Joomla 4.3.0 FAQ page here: https://docs.joomla.org/Category:Version_4.3.0_FAQ

At the moment all of the reported issues in this thread have working workarounds:

1. LanguagHelper/Cookie issue -just delete the namespacemap file and set option to Session instead of Year in the module options.
2. Auth Plugin/Upgrade partially - manually upload files again
3. Media/Fileinfo issue - install PHP Extension for FileInfo at your webhost/server admin level.
4. GuidedTours class missing - just delete the namespacemap file

[fada]

So I have not got to the bottom of the Login issue yet, only having access to 2 sites at the moment, but there are consistancies and inconsistancies with both.

The fact is that the upgrade was attempted, but some files were NOT extracted, but then the cleanup script deleted the old plugins (expecting the new plugin to be extracted already). This leads to an inconsistant state.
[...]

Kindest regards
Phil

Hi everybody,

Here is Marc Dechèvre, aka Woluweb.
Txs Phil for having investigated this issue so much in detail!

Actually after the update to J4.3 I had 8 sites our of 22 which had the following error preventing from logging... so also from fixing anything:

Code: Select all

JAuthentication: :authenticate: Failed to load plugin:

Yesterday evening I had already fixed 3 of them... by restoring a backup of the previous night and by running again the update... without any issue that time.

Today, txs to the post of Phil above, I tested the following method (which is faster than restoring and so avoids loosing 24 hours of potential changes on the concerned sites) with success:
- I renamed /plugins/authentication (or you could delete it but I wanted to be able to revert)
- I uploaded the plugins/authentication folder from a ZIP version of J4.3
- I deleted /administrator/cache/autoload_psr4.php
- ... and then -tadaam- I could log in
- so then, just to be sure
- I checked if any Database Fix was available
- I checked if any extension was to Discover
- I reinstalled Joomla from the interface
- again I checked if any Database Fix was available
- again I checked if any extension was to Discover

Txs again!

EDIT: and for some of them I had to install the Guided Tour Module myself manually and to enable the plugin

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

You should then go to joomla update and use the “reinstall joomla” feature to ensure all your files are updated and not only a percentage of them, else you might have some older version files not yet overwritten

[sozzled]

J! 4.3.0 doesn’t appear too healthy at the moment so I’ll probably hold off upgrading until I’ve done some preliminary testing on a “throwaway”/test site. I’ve noticed that people have written that J! 4.3.0 “should” support PHP 8.2—although PHP 8.2 is not currently in my sights at the moment—but I haven’t seen anyone confirm that J! 4.3.0 websites actually work with PHP 8.2 yet.

It just appears, from preliminary reading of forum discussions, that people are just saying that J! 4.3.0 works with PHP 8.2 without having tested things properly.

Y’know, given the number of changes involved in assembling this new release, one week to test J! 4.3.0 RC with a broader section of the community than the beta testers doesn’t appear to have an adequate lead time to iron-out the many defects discovered after a so-called stable release was done.

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

I’m running PHP 8.2.5 in production - with 1000s of users, but yeah, not a Joomla site haha - it can be achieved easily with the right choice of framework (Symfony)

Joomla is trying to catch up with PHP compatibility 2 years after every other project and even the ways it makes things compatible are highly frowned upon (band aid solutions instead of solid type-safe solution type fixes)

I think my dev Joomla docker image is PHP 8.1, I’ll replace that with 8.2.5 tomorrow and see what breaks - not that I can report bugs any longer but it will be for fun and giggles.

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

Joomla 4.3.1 is slated on the official release schedule for early next week (Tuesday)

[sozzled]

Thanks, @Phil. I trust your comments about the viability of PHP 8.2 and J! 4.3 more than I trust those observations by people writing that it "should" work instead of it does work. Comments that use "should" (instead of comments supported by actually testing such claims) are little more than a sales-pitch. I agree with you that J! development is notoriously slow in playing catch-up with what's happening in the broader web world (e.g. PHP, SQL, etc.) but, given the limited amount of effort from the CMS development team members—somewhat understandable in view of the fractious debates between team members, of course—and their overall general lack of engagement with people who actually use J! on a day-to-day basis (e.g. people who use this forum as a prime example)—it's a hard and thankless task. We could have a wider discussion about the way that the CMS development team has distanced/isolated itself on GitHub—and shut itself off from this forum—but that's the way things have been going on for a very long time.

It's largely a one-way dialogue, isn't it?

We'll see what we shall see.

C'est la vie ...

[PhilTaylor-Prazgod]

As promised I have spent an hour with Joomla 4.3.0 running in PHP 8.2.5 & MariaDB 10.10.3 (Dockerized) with error reporting set to maximum and debug mode enabled (PHP Display Errors set to On)

I found not a single undefined var, deprecated message, or Fatal error.

I found 4 bugs which (as Im banned) I cannot report, but ultimately Joomla 4.3.0 seems compatible with PHP 8.2.5 out of the box (and before installing any extensions, plugins or template frameworks, on a fresh install not a mature upgraded or migrated site)

One of the main bugs was the debug mode causes Memory exhausted errors after a while specifically on the first administrator/index.php?option=com_cpanel&view=cpanel&dashboard=system page on the getMenuBadgeData Ajax calls. This only happens with debug mode enabled and was repeatable in my tests, but as it's an Ajax request I doubt anyone else is going to notice this or report it.

So yes, it does "seem" that Joomla 4.3.0 "should" work with PHP 8.2.5 :-)

... although some of the choices on how they silenced deprecated and warnings (by simply typecasting vars instead of correcting the underlying data) is still frowned upon by those outside, and even inside the project (See Sharky's thumbs down often)

As for "Development Team", the stats at issues.joomla.org still have me listed as the number 6 contributor of code in the last decade and there are only 9 code writers above the Joomla-dependancy-bot - which is a bot! Joomla Development is slow because the "inner circle" don't value contributors and the project is toxic. Teeman, who is not a professional PHP developer but a tinker, is consistently number 1 just for pushing pixels and languages around.

Today there are 284 open Pull Requests, 125 of those are targeted at Joomla 4.3 but were not merged before 4.3.0 was released, The oldest PR goes back to 2019 which has now been pushed to Joomla 5!!! There are still 96 PR's targeted at the Joomla 4.2 branch, which is now end of life and superseded by Joomla 4.3 series.

There are 54 Pull Requests flagged as RTC (Ready to commit) that have not yet been merged into the codebase. The oldest of those goes back to Aug 19th 2022...

These are just facts, Im not making these up.


(This was a test of PHP 8.2.5, this is not a post saying the 4 main issues with the Joomla 4.3.0 release are resolved, they are not, they are documented here https://docs.joomla.org/Category:Version_4.3.0_FAQ)

[formfranska]

Phil, Thank you again for more valuable and important info. I especially appreciate this since I don't have the knowledge to interpret all that myself, even though I know the issue tracker is available for everyone to see. But it's a whole nother thing to understand it.