Errors displayed when Moodle went down - what is the cause

Errors displayed when Moodle went down - what is the cause

by Barbara Taylor -
Number of replies: 3
Our system admin says that Moodle has PHP/coding errors that are bring our system down at random times.  I don't have access to the logs.  I do have two errors we saw today when it happened.  Does anyone have information on what they are related to, what causes the issue, and what we need to do to keep it from happening?  We haven't customized anything with Moodle code.  We are running version 3.4.5  Everything shows OK for the Environment checks.  We are using PHP 7.1.22, Apache/2.4.6 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) Open SSL/1.0.2k-fips, 20120211 API version.  Our servers are virtual, we use a Netscaler, and Dell Compellent. 

Error:  Exception - Call to undefined function preg_match()
Error: Exception - Call to undefined method custom_menu::override_children()

Thank you,

Barbara



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In reply to Barbara Taylor

Re: Errors displayed when Moodle went down - what is the cause

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Haven't experienced exactly the same but .....

If there are no addons/plugins from what you've shared sounds like/looks like theme custom menu's issue.  Those are the drop down menus that stay displayed at the top of every page.

/admin/settings.php?section=themesettings on your site.

Custom menu items

Help on that says:

"You can configure a custom menu here to be shown by themes. Each line consists of some menu text, a link URL (optional), a tooltip title (optional) and a language code or comma-separated list of codes (optional, for displaying the line to users of the specified language only), separated by pipe characters. Lines starting with a hyphen will appear as menu items in the previous top level menu, and dividers can be used by adding a line of one or more # characters where desired. For example:

Moodle community|https://moodle.org
-Moodle free support|https://moodle.org/support
-Moodle Docs|http://docs.moodle.org|Moodle Docs
-German Moodle Docs|http://docs.moodle.org/de|Documentation in German|de
-###
-Moodle development|https://moodle.org/development
Moodle.com|http://moodle.com/


Could be that one of the menu items has an errant character when an item is selected - the randomness of it.

Best guess ... given info.

Could turn on debugging and ask that all using the system report anything they see.  Debug shows more specific things.

'spirit of sharing', Ken


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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Errors displayed when Moodle went down - what is the cause

by Barbara Taylor -

Hi Ken,

Thank you for your response.  We are using Adaptable theme, 1.7.1, 2018073000.  We have a custom navigation that looks similar to what you posted.

I learned that the logs are showing a PHP opcache corruption.  Is Moodle causing the corruption or is PHP causing the corruption?  Is there any way to tell?

Barbara

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In reply to Barbara Taylor

Re: Errors displayed when Moodle went down - what is the cause

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Turn on debugging to the max.  Tell your admin person to restart apache service.   PHP opcache can get corrupted just like any other cache ... so admin person is telling you that ... gee, may we see what he/she is saying claiming ... like a clip of the web service logs showing this opache corruption.

We could go on and on about this one 'discovery at a time' with you being a middle person ... tough spot to be in.

Ask your admin person to install one of these ...

https://www.stevejenkins.com/blog/2014/07/my-favorite-zend-opcache-status-scripts/

then you can see for yourself ... and take screen snaps from to share back here.

Better yet ask this admin person why they aren't signed up in these forums and asking themselves!!! :\

'spirit of sharing', Ken


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