Local to remote hell!!! - empty Manager/'files' tree

Hi Folks

Well, here I am a month later and still not online!

I've tried Vapor a dozen times, following everything to the letter,
following all Vapor troubleshooting suggestions to the letter.
Ok, so I assume that for my particular installation Vapor isn't
going to work on this occasion.
I've also done everything manually (a dozen times),
following all troubleshooting suggestions to the letter…
And I still get an empty 'files' tree in the remote manager.

I apologise up front as no one wants to read War and Peace,
but here's what I do when doing everything long hand:-

LOCAL SITE MANAGER
empty cache/permissions.
turn off furl's.
uncompress css/js

LOCAL
rename .htaccess to ht.access
local phpMyAdmin - create db SQL file (with DROP TABLE and CREATE TABLE) in the export.
zip my assets.

____________________________

REMOTE
cPanel - create fresh db.
Using 'install.php' install fresh (Std Trad) MODx instance
(have also used Softaculous within cPanel to install MODx).
Connect MODx to the created db.
Using phpMyAdmin, import the local SQL file into the db.
Used the File Manager to upload and extract the zipped assets to the 'assets' folder.
Clear browser cache/cookies (have tried all major browsers).
rename ht.access to .htaccess and ensuring 'rewriteBase/' is as.
Delete contents of 'core/cache'

REMOTE SITE MANAGER
Clear cache/permissions…

____________________________


THIS WORKS!

However no sooner have I punched the air then my 'files' tree empties.
I'm not 100% sure but I think it may be something to do with turning furl's back on (?)
My console shows an internal server error 500: with the following message…
'http://mySite/subFolder/connectors/index.php?action=browser/directory/getList&id=/"
I have looked at Bob's suggestions on this matter…

Would this have something to do with my host perhaps?
Also when right-clicking 'Filesystem' under Media Sources,
'basePath' and 'baseUrl' have empty values but are green in colour.
Is that significant I wonder?

I'm using:
MODX 2.3.3
MAMP (latest (3.0.7.3))
PHP (5.5.18)
MySQL (5.5.38)
Chrome: Std and Canary (latest versions)…(although, again as suggested, I have tried other browsers)
Mac OX (Lion-10.7.5).

Hosting:
Standard shared hosting account with cPanel.

I'm being very methodical about this (I think),
but am beginning to lose my marbles here!
I so want MODx to work for me.
What am I doing wrooooong!!?
Please help me!! B-)

Kind Regards
Chris Ray [ed. note: geordiechris last edited this post 11 years, 3 months ago.]

Have you re run setup once you transferred everything over to the new server and checked the paths are correct in the core/config/config.php file ?

Also try changing the compress_css and compress_js to 0 in the site settings table of the database log out of the manager, delete the core cache folder and log into the manager again

Definitely run setup if you haven't yet, but don't proceed unless the "upgrade install" box is checked.

I try not to push it here, but this might be a good use case for SiteCheck. It will check all the paths and URLs in the config files for you (and a lot of other stuff). Even if that's not the problem, it's nice to be able to eliminate that as the culprit.

FURLs, themselves, should have nothing to do with the file tree. It's possible, but I think unlikely, that the issue is in .htaccess though.

Hi Guys

Firstly thanks for your time.
Yes Paul I've tried the setup route several times.
Checked the paths in the 'config.inc.php' file.
re css/js compression: Is there a difference between editing the db table versus
simply changing the System Settings values in the manager? I thought not.
Anyway, either way I've tried that as a step in nearly all the migration attempts.
Same goes for deleting the core/cache contents.

Re .htaccess:

This is from the official docs.
Seems a bit vague to me…

(my added emphasis)

The RewriteBase for a subdirectory installation may have to be entered as: RewriteBase /subdirectoryName/ although this is normally only necessary on localhost installs.The RewriteBase line should almost always end with a slash.

My site is in a sub folder so I've tried 'RewriteBase/' and 'RewriteBase/subFolder'.

And although I will soon be purchasing SiteCheck Bob I cannot for the life of me understand why I should need it for what should be a fundamental part of MODx.
I cannot understand why it works briefly then disappears…

Ok back to the drawing board.
Thanks again guys.

No matter how careful you are, it's still easy to miss a mistake in the config files, though I doubt if that's your problem. SiteCheck also checks for a number of problems that can mess up the Resource and Element trees, but now that I think about it, you're right that it's not likely to find anything that would mess with the file tree.

Are you running any other cache (APC, varnish, etc?). I don't see how that would affect the file tree, but we're running out of ideas.

Did you run Vapor from the command line? If not, it might have hit the default 30-second PHP time limit and not completed.

I know you've checked most of these, but since the rest of the site seems to be working, what you're seeing really sounds like one of these things (my money would be on the first one):

- Leftover cookie (try using incognito or private mode after deleting the cache files manually)

- compress_js/compress_css (if they're set to 0 in the DB, it's not this)

- cache corruption (see if just manually deleting the cache files solves it temporarily)

- misconfigured or corrupt Media Source

- permissions (see if making yourself a sudo user solves it, if not, it's definitely not this)

- Session trouble (this will goof up the permissions, though it usually breaks the rest of the Manager)

- Missing or corrupted file(s) in the install. Try using the method described here to copy the files over. Be sure *not* to transfer core/config/config.inc.php or any of the config.core.php files (in the root, manager, and connectors directories).

Hi Bob

Of course I will again work through your fine suggestions methodically.
But just one or two queries first...

Forgive me if I'm being a dullard here but on the matter of cache'ing,
Do you refer to the remote or local cache?
Only I did some research, with reference to MAMP,
on that recently and I gathered APC was a good choice.
I now revisit that topic and no cache seems to be a good option.
Is this irrelevant or not?

No, I ran Vapor manually. And each time the transport.zip file was generated it was
always within around 12-15 seconds.
So with the 30 second PHP time limit in mind would that categorically
rule out that as being the problem do you think? Or could the file still
potentially be incomplete?

How does one go about tackling this glitch?

- misconfigured or corrupt Media Source

Once again Many Thanks

I meant the core/cache directory on the server where you're having trouble. Of course the browser cache (especially it's JS cache) is relevant to both sites, though using incognito or private mode should prevent that issue.

If you used the APC cache locally, it could be relevant. I don't use it so I'm not sure what changes are necessary to use it, but if those changes got transferred to the remote, they could be causing trouble.

I also don't use Vapor, but have heard that it can be unreliable with large sites. It sounds like you avoided the timeout issue, but I don't know if that guarantees that Vapor didn't have a problem. My guess would be no.

On the Media Source, one issue would be the path, though it sounds like yours is good (assuming that the MODX_BASE_PATH is correct). The other issue would be Media Source permissions. The blank file tree might be caused by MODX thinking you don't have the permission to view the files. If making yourself a sudo user and clearing permissions *and* sessions doesn't fix it, though, it's not a permission issue.

Hi Bob

Let me work through your suggestions.

Very much obliged to you for your time and effort…
once again.

Hi Bob

After working through just about all suggestions I still hit the same problem.
I then opened a ticket with my hosting company…

On looking at the status of recently modified files they found entries in the '/home/mySite/public_html/connectors/error_log'

[17-Jul-2015 06:46:28 Europe/London] PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_strtolower() in /home/mySite/public_html/core/model/modx/sources/modfilemediasource.class.php on line 172

Which boiled down to them selecting 'Select PHP Version' in cPanel and then activating the non-default extension 'mbstring'.

Apparently this has something to do with how MODx deals with multibyte and Unicode-based encodings (i.e. UTF-8).
Perhaps that would explain how the Manager displayed correctly initially but went awry after the first code change thereafter.

I was then able to migrate both manually and using Vapor without any apparent problem.

I would appreciate any thoughts on this.
Otherwise, many thanks for your unselfish help.

I'm glad you got it sorted.

I pretty much stick to these hosts to help avoid problems like the one you had.