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Admin Tools

#34657 White screen after update

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 duanemitchell on Thursday, 11 March 2021 09:26 CST

duanemitchell

I updated 4 of my sites to the latest Admin Tools which resulted in a white screen in 3 of them and the FOF error in another.

Can I FTP into the site and disable Admin Tools by moving it to another folder?

Thank youi.

Duane Mitchell

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

Thank you for contacting us.

Your problem is a variation of one of the following issues. None of these issues are a bug in our software. In an effort to help as many people as possible we have collected the issues we are seeing and their solutions.

You have an opcode cache issue

Ask your host to reset the PHP opcode cache after updating our software.

While our post-installation script does try to reset the opcode cache, whether it is able to depends on your server setup. If your host has enabled opcode caching in PHP but disabled the PHP function to reset the opcode cache upgrading our software will not reset the opcode cache. As a result your server will still see the old version of our code but some files it referenced may no longer be there. This would result in all sorts of problems, from minor display issues to inability to access your site.

FOF 4 was not installed fully or at all

Our software released between mid-2015 and February 2021 inclusive was using version 3 of our FOF backend framework. Software released on and after March 2nd, 2021 is using version 4 of the framework.

There is a long-standing Joomla issue which may prevent the new version of an extension, such as FOF, to be installed fully or at all. It happens rarely but with thousands of sites using our software it's an issue we see every time we publish a new release. There is a way to work around this.

Download the ZIP file of our software's latest version. Extract it. There is a file called lib_fof40.zip. Extract this file too. There is a folder called fof extracted. Rename it to fof40 and upload it into your site's libraries directories, overwriting a folder named fof40 if it already exists.

Please note that you may have other folders named fof (f oh f), f0f (f zero f) or fof30. DO NOT overwrite them; that would very likely break your site.

After doing that you may have to clear your server's PHP opcode cache (opcache) per the first item in this message.

FEF was not upgraded to version 2 fully or at all

Our software released between 2017 and February 2021 inclusive was using version 1 of our FEF frontend framework. Software released on and after March 2nd, 2021 is using version 2 of the framework.

Due to the same Joomla issue as above it's possible that FEF was not updated fully or at all. There is a way to work around this.

Download the ZIP file of our software's latest version. Extract it. There is a file called file_fef.zip. Extract this file too. Upload the extracted contents into your site's media/fef folder, replacing existing files and directories.

After doing that you may have to clear your server's PHP opcode cache (opcache) per the first item in this message.

The component you are installing or one of its plugins is not fully upgraded

Again due to the same Joomla issue it may be possible that the component you are installing or one of its accompanying plugins are not fully installed.

Assuming that you have access to your site's backend it's enough to try to install the latest version of our software twice in a row, without uninstalling it before or in between. Because Joomla's bug only happens rarely it's virtually guaranteed that the two installations in a row will work just fine. That's been our experience the last 13 years.

Out of date template overrides

This only applies if you have problems in the frontend of your site, you are using one of our extensions with a frontend part (e.g. Akeeba Ticket System, LoginGuard etc) and you have done template overrides to style it.

Please note that the new versions of our software may have changed the view template files you used to create your template overrides or changed their names. Please review your template overrides. This is especially important when you are upgrading to a new minor or major release of our software, i.e. the first or digit before the second or first dot in the version number respectively has changed compared to the previous version of our software you had installed on your site.

Old plugins

It's possible that your site was using at some point an old version of our software which included plugins which are no longer present. While we tried to remove obsolete plugins when updating our software in the past this has not always been possible under all circumstances. As a result, you may be stuck with a very old plugin that has not been maintained for several years and which depends on an old version of our software and/or an old version of our backend framework. This could cause problems on your site including inability to access the backend and/or frontend of your site when upgrading to a new version of our software, especially a version released on or after March 2nd, 2021.

You can safely delete the following folders from your site if they exist:

  • plugins/system/akeebaupdatecheck
  • plugins/system/akeebaactionlog
  • plugins/system/aklazy
  • plugins/system/atoolsjupdatecheck
  • plugins/system/atoolsupdatecheck
  • plugins/system/oneclickaction
  • plugins/system/srp

These are the obsolete plugins from very old versions of Akeeba Backup and Admin Tools.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

duanemitchell

Hello,

Sorry for the delay I've had other issues to deal with.

I tried all the recommended solutions and none have worked. I'm working with my host now on the opcode cache issue.

 

Thank you.

Duane Mitchell

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

The only other plugins which could be interfering in the backend only are those in the actionlog group. Try deleting these folders too:

  • plugins/actionlog/admintools
  • plugins/actionlog/akeebabackup
  • plugins/actionlog/ats

If this still doesn't help you will need to talk to your host about the OPcache, indeed.

Before installing the new version (Akeeba Backup 8.0.2 and Admin Tools 6.0.3) you may have to disable the plugins mentioned at the very top of this article http://akeeba.com/news/1744-advice-for-install-probs-with-march-2021-software-releases.html

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

duanemitchell

This problem is in my Firefox browser. Opening an incognito tab works as does another browser. Flushing the cache on the browser did not seem to work.

I can take it from here. Let's close this ticket. Once again thank you for you great service!

Regards,

Duane Mitchell

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