Dashboard "Recent Courses" and some sidebar links don't work after upgrade

Dashboard "Recent Courses" and some sidebar links don't work after upgrade

by David White -
Number of replies: 5
I upgraded a Moodle site yesterday to Moodle 3.10.3+ FROM several versions back.
The previous version was 3.6.3+.

After the upgrade, some of the navigation links in the side bar aren't working.
  • Specifically, if I click on "Courses", it doesn't expand. It just sits there (although, fortunately, that particular link takes me to /course/index.php, where the courses are also listed, so we can navigate using the links on that page).
  • Additionally, the "Site Administration" link doesn't load. It just sits there

Separately, the Dashboard page is empty, and it doesn't appear that the "Recently Accessed Courses" is being populated correctly. What could be causing these symptoms, and how can I track down the solution? 


Average of ratings: -
In reply to David White

Re: Dashboard "Recent Courses" and some sidebar links don't work after upgrade

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Did you hyperjump?  3.6.x to 3.10.3+?

Theme is?  Are all plugins present compant with the 3.10.3+?

Anything with debugging turned on?  Or anything in error logs?

'SoS', Ken

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Dashboard "Recent Courses" and some sidebar links don't work after upgrade

by David White -
I did hyperjump, yes.
I believe that the theme is Classic.

You can actually see the site at lms[dot]ps78teachers[dot]org. Logged out, you can still see the symptoms with the "Courses" link in the sidebar.
All plugins seem to have been updated fine. There was only 1 "additional" plugin that just sets the display of the logo at the top of the page.

Nothing (that I can tell) is in the Apache or PHP error logs.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to David White

Re: Dashboard "Recent Courses" and some sidebar links don't work after upgrade

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
The HTML source has snippets like /theme/image.php/classic/forum/1618954576/icon. So it is classic. Looks somehow slightly different. Did you customize it?

Visiting yoursite/my/ I get an empty dashboard. (See attachment) But that doesn't say anything, since I am only the Guest.

During upgrading, it is better to the minor upgrade, say to 3.6.last and then the major upgrade. But I don't think that is the cause.

Attachment Screenshot_2021-04-21_13-24-28.png
Average of ratings: -
In reply to David White

Re: Dashboard "Recent Courses" and some sidebar links don't work after upgrade

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Please use the attached sos.html file.

Download then upload to site putting it at the code root of your site.

Login as you normally would.   After logging on, use a new browser tab and go directly to https://site/sos.html

The file is relatively addressed urls to admin areas you cannot currently get to.  Clicks on any link in sos.html file should open in a new tab.   Once there, one can change parameters to the form and save.

Then use the refereshed original browser tab to see if those changes have taken affect.

Suggest trying to the purge caches link in the SOS page first.

There is a link in the SOS page for turning on debugging.

'SoS', Ken

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Dashboard "Recent Courses" and some sidebar links don't work after upgrade

by David White -
Thanks for the SOS.
The /admin/ portal works perfectly fine, thankfully. It's just the link that is supposed to TAKE me to the admin portal that is broken.
I can type /admin/ in the URL, and it will get me there.

I did try clearing all of the caches, and unfortunately that doesn't resolve the issue with the links.
The links in the sidebar are what I'm referring to. See the screenshot below.

So in this view, when I click on "Courses", I see this wheel sort of spinning - you can see it in the screenshot - and the Courses doesn't expand downwards.
The same is true for whenever I click on "Site Administration".

Navigation sidebar


This feels like some sort of AJAX issue, as opposed to a php issue. 
I do have a php_errors.log file that I'm logging PHP errors to, and definitely don't see any relevant errors (or any errors, for that matter).

I did turn debugging on briefly earlier this evening, and this error does look interesting to me.
I don't think its relevant, but it caught my eye:

[08-May-2021 18:59:57 America/New_York] Default exception handler: Sorry, the requested file could not be found Debug: 
Error code: filenotfound
* line 498 of /lib/setuplib.php: moodle_exception thrown
* line 2075 of /lib/filelib.php: call to print_error()
* line 4990 of /lib/filelib.php: call to send_file_not_found()
* line 44 of /pluginfile.php: call to file_pluginfile()

Average of ratings: -