Gibbon 17 Not Loading (Complete Non-functionality)

ErnestP · May 9, 2019, 6:47am

I’m having a bizarre problem, and I’m concerned about it affecting my ability to use Gibbon for the next school year.

I’m getting ready to move to a new school, as our current school will close. The plan was to use Gibbon again in the new program I am helping found. Currently I’m using Gibbon through Lithium Hosting, a shared hosting provider.

Well our school may or may not reopen in a new location. So someone from the current school’s parent company is visiting, because she may be involved in the running of the program next year, should it continue. She wanted to explore Gibbon.

Rather than give her access to our live system, where something could end up edited, I decided to install a clean copy and let her set it up with some fake data, so she can go through the whole process. I created a new test subdomain and installed Gibbon into it.

We are currently running 16.0.01. The new install (via Softaculous) was of 17.0.0 with no ability to install an older version. Upon installing Gibbon 17, I was completely unable to access my new install. Clicking the link provided by the installer, or manually entering the address, I was left with a white, empty browser window and no page loading.

Thinking that was bizarre, I deleted the installation and cloned our existing into the test subdomain. The cloned installation worked fine!

I then decided to try updating the cloned installation to 17. As soon as the update completed, no pages would load in the test subdomain. Same issue; empty, white window and a browser that says it’s done loading!

Is there a new PHP requirement or something else different in 17 that could be causing this? Because with a new school next year, we would also be changing our domain and working with a fresh install of Gibbon. But if I can’t run installs of 17, and I can’t install an older version, I’m not really sure what I’m going to do!

sandra · May 9, 2019, 7:42am

Hi ErnestP,

Yes, Gibbon version 17 requires a minimum of PHP version 7.0, be sure to check the PHP version that your new server is running.

If you have FTP access to your server, you can install older versions without using Softaculous, by following the standard install instructions. It’s recommended to run the latest version though, if possible. All Gibbon releases are available through GitHub.

Hope this helps!

ErnestP · May 17, 2019, 3:55am

It’s been a busy couple of weeks thanks to AP tests, so I didn’t have a chance to follow up.

My PCP version is set to 7.2, so apparently that’s not the source of my problem. Unless there are any other ideas, I think I will be looking for a new host for next academic year.

ross · May 19, 2019, 10:50pm

Hi Ernest, so, it should not be a PHP version issue, but it sounds like a PHP error is definitely occuring. If your host will give you access to the PHP error logs, this ought to tell you something about what is going on. Share the relevant log entries with us if you get access. Otherwise, it might be time for a new host. Good luck! Ross.

ErnestP · May 27, 2019, 7:00am

I hope this is what you need from the log. I just tried the update (again on a cloned installation in a different subdomain to test it). Same problem, these errors in my log. If this is the wrong log, please let me know!

[27-May-2019 06:55:07 UTC] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘?’ in /home/[username]/[subdomain.domain.tld]/src/Services/CoreServiceProvider.php on line 174 [27-May-2019 06:55:12 UTC] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘?’ in /home/[username]/[subdomain.domain.tld]/src/Services/CoreServiceProvider.php on line 174 [27-May-2019 06:55:18 UTC] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘?’ in /home/[username]/[subdomain.domain.tld]/src/Services/CoreServiceProvider.php on line 174 [27-May-2019 06:55:25 UTC] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘?’ in /home/[username]/[subdomain.domain.tld]/src/Services/CoreServiceProvider.php on line 174 [27-May-2019 06:55:30 UTC] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘?’ in /home/[username]/[subdomain.domain.tld]/src/Services/CoreServiceProvider.php on line 174 [27-May-2019 06:55:33 UTC] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘?’ in /home/[username]/[subdomain.domain.tld]/src/Services/CoreServiceProvider.php on line 174 [27-May-2019 06:55:50 UTC] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘?’ in /home/[username]/[subdomain.domain.tld]/src/Services/CoreServiceProvider.php on line 174 [27-May-2019 06:55:59 UTC] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘?’ in /home/[username]/[subdomain.domain.tld]/src/Services/CoreServiceProvider.php on line 174 [27-May-2019 06:56:09 UTC] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘?’ in /home/[username]/[subdomain.domain.tld]/src/Services/CoreServiceProvider.php on line 174 [27-May-2019 06:56:09 UTC] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘?’ in /home/[username]/[subdomain.domain.tld]/src/Services/CoreServiceProvider.php on line 174 `

sandra · May 27, 2019, 7:49am

Hi Ernest,

Looks like it’s tripping over the ??` null-coalesce operator, which is a PHP 7 feature. This seems to indicate that it’s running a PHP version that is less than PHP 7. On a shared hosting provider it’s possible that there are multiple versions available, or the one reported on the command line is not the one running on the webserver. One way to test this would be to can you create a phpinfo page (https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.phpinfo.php#refsect1-function.phpinfo-examples) and see what it reports.