Hi folks. I'm trying to track down an issue with a D6 site that's being migrated from an internal server to an AWS instance. We're getting the dreaded "site off-line" error (copied at the end of this post).

I've done a ton of reading on this and tried:
-triple-checking the settings.php DB credentials (they're fine)
-confirming that I could write a test PHP script that accessed the database with the same credentials that settings.php has (yep, works)
-checking settings.php to make sure there wasn't something resetting the DB variables (nope)
-checking for lurking duplicate settings.php files (nope)
-"Updating" the site; making sure that the core files are up to date (didn't change a thing).

Anyone have any other ideas? I've mostly worked with D7, so D6 problems are a bit of a mystery to me. Nothing's showing up in the site's error logs that looks like a lead and of course since the site doesn't seem to be able to talk to the DB there's nothing in watchdog. The second bullet above is the interesting one, since clearly SOMETHING can talk to the DB, just not Drupal for some reason.

And here's the full error:

Site off-line

The site is currently not available due to technical problems. Please try again later. Thank you for your understanding.

If you are the maintainer of this site, please check your database settings in the settings.php file and ensure that your hosting provider's database server is running. For more help, see the handbook, or contact your hosting provider.

Comments

nevets’s picture

Did you copy over the .htaccess file?

uzuri’s picture

From the other server? I believe so (I didn't do the original transfer). What's likely to be a problem with it that I might need to look into?

nevets’s picture

Look in the site root and make sure the .htaccess file is present.

uzuri’s picture

It's there.

Jaypan’s picture

Look at your PHP, Apache and MySQL error logs to see if you can find more information.

uzuri’s picture

I've looked at all the logs I have access to with no luck; I'll have to pass that on to the server admin to see what he can see that I can't.

uzuri’s picture

Just had to report out on this. It was a "simple" password problem, with Drupal not being able to communicate with the database. Somehow -- and no one's sure quite how -- there was a single character in the password that looked right, but was wrong. When the admin sent me the credentials, he must have retyped them, and when I did my test php connection and my test command-line mysql connection I copied the credentials from his email; no one thought to retype the password in settings.php and see what happened.

That was a new one on me. It wasn't your typical problem character, it was a symbol that I've never seen give a problem anywhere else or that has close visual analogs that I know of.