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Site Restoration

#19795 Blank white page after restoration

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
This is a public ticket

Everybody will be able to see its contents. Do not include usernames, passwords or any other sensitive information.

Environment Information

PHP version
n/a
CMS Type
Other
CMS Version
n/a
Backup Tool Version
n/a
Kickstart version
n/a

Latest post by tampe125 on Wednesday, 09 April 2014 08:53 CDT

amiella
 Hi. For technical reasons I need to duplicate my site. I have created a subdomain with the same provider (Servage), Backed up the existing site and installed it in the new subdomain - http://move.k-i-h.org using Kickstart.
Everything went smooth but I have no access to both sides of the site.
I tried some of the suggestions Nicolas gave in the #14669 support ticket but nothing helped.
I have absolutely no idea how to read log files or fix PHP errors (if I was to find them).
I need your help please

amiella
I have no access to the backend.
In the configuration.php file there is no ?> at the end. I have checked configuration.php in 3 of my other sites and none of them have ?> at the end of the configuration.php file.
I am confused....

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Hello Ami,

in order to help you, we need to know what's wrong with your site, and this mean we need an error.
Please follow Nicholas instructions, I can paste them there as a reminder:

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.

P.s. The missing ?> tag at the end of the configuration file is not an error, it's done on purpose to avoid errors

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

amiella
OK. I managed to get it to show errors but I cannot access the backend

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
You are supposed to post here those error, so I can help you.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

amiella
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class JDatabaseInterface in /mounted-storage/home158/sub042/sc83925-RRCY/www.kiah.org.il/libraries/joomla/database/database.php on line 21

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Are you restoring on top of a different Joomla version?
For example, a 3.x site on top of an old 2.5 site or viceversa?

If that's the case, please delete the whole content before restoring your backup?
Kickstart will only create new files, it won't delete any existing ones

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

amiella
No. It is a new and clean site transfer to en empty folder and a new empty DB.

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
The backed up site is working fine?
Did you updated it or did you did anything and after that you backed it up?

It seems that you have some messed up files, since you are getting an error about declaring the database class twice, which of course is not possible.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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