Answered can't access my modx site (emergency)

I have a relatively old installation of modx which has worked for 2 or three years. Recently I looked at it and I'm getting the message "site temporarily unavailable". The problem is permanent. I can't view any pages and I can't log into the admin section. All attempts yield the message.

I have done nothing to change the environment. Don't know about my host. I urgently need to get this working. Can anyone give me an idea on how to fix this? I'd rather not try to recover from a backup. In fact, the timed backups may not have a version prior to when the problem started. I will attempt a recovery from backup if there are no other approaches.

I desperately need to get into the manager in order to recover the content (remember I can't access manager or anything else)

I'm using Rev 2.2.1.4 -- I know it's out of date, but upgrades to Modx seem to be difficult when using a shared host. I plan to re-install it in order to get it up to date.

TIA
Rick

Firstly try going to /setup ( presuming you never deleted the setup folder ) and see if it asks you to install or upgrade., if it asks you to upgrade go ahead and do that to see if that solves it, if it asks you to setup it means that it's not connecting/detecting the database so make sure that the connection details in core / config / config.inc.php are correct and the database is actually ok

Quote from: paulp at Feb 20, 2015, 09:22 AM

Firstly try going to /setup ( presuming you never deleted the setup folder ) and see if it asks you to install or upgrade., if it asks you to upgrade go ahead and do that to see if that solves it, if it asks you to setup it means that it's not connecting/detecting the database so make sure that the connection details in core / config / config.inc.php are correct and the database is actually ok

Thanks very much for your reply. I installed it using a "quick install" feature with my host, so I got what that installer left behind. There is no /setup. MODX is not installed at the root of the site and I checked the site root, plus the MODX root, plus /core and /manager.

I checked config.inc.php. It looks ok to me, but the quick install selected the database and user names and password. I opened the database with phpmyadmin and it opens ok with 68 tables.

Quote from: paulp at Feb 20, 2015, 09:22 AM

Firstly try going to /setup ( presuming you never deleted the setup folder ) and see if it asks you to install or upgrade., if it asks you to upgrade go ahead and do that to see if that solves it, if it asks you to setup it means that it's not connecting/detecting the database so make sure that the connection details in core / config / config.inc.php are correct and the database is actually ok

Follow up: I went ahead and restored the MODX portion of the site from the most recent backup. The symptoms are still there, with the temporarily unavailable message.

Is the message in a large red bar, or is it a standard web server error message?

Quote from: sottwell at Feb 20, 2015, 10:31 AM

Is the message in a large red bar, or is it a standard web server error message?

standard web server message

Quote from: sottwell at Feb 20, 2015, 10:34 AM

I had this situation once before years ago. The hosting provider had moved the domain to a different server without notifying their customers, so the paths were no longer valid.

This is a potentially good lead. I DID discover that the name of one of the directories in the full path name to the MODX root changed. I corrected it in config.inc.php in the several places where it occurs. Unfortunately, the problem still persists. Does that path name occur anywhere else in the MODX site?

Probably in all three config.core.php files, one in the root, one in the /connectors/ and one in /manager/. You also might want to double-check your .htaccess file.

Quote from: sottwell at Feb 20, 2015, 10:34 AM

I had this situation once before years ago. The hosting provider had moved the domain to a different server without notifying their customers, so the paths were no longer valid.

Found all of the occurrences of config files containing the full server path, and I was able to log into the manager back end. To be clear, this was not a change in server but a change in the path to the site root -- but that's a minor point.

THANKS!!! To all who offered suggestions, and to sottwell who nailed it.

Rick.