[Forum] Hooks problem since updating to 4.1.10

[oatsy]

Updated from 4.1.5 to 4.1.10 today. All seems well bar that as soon as I enable Plugins/Hooks I loose the forum to a blank page.

After I completed the update I couldn't log in - started to login then kicked me back out to a blank page. Disabled hooks in config and was able to log in ok, and all was fine. Then I disabled all plugins individually with the intention of turning them on one at a time until I found the problem. But as soon as I commented out the disable plugins in config I was back to the blank screen. Even with all plugins individually disabled.

Used the Options menu in admincp to disbale Hooks and plugins again and all was fine again.

Now I've uninstalled them all bar the vbulletin Blog and CMS that are vB default plugins (I have vB Suite but only use the forums, not Blog or CMS) and I still get the blank screen.


So what can be causing the problem? Left over files after uninstalling them? If so, what do I need to do to identify the cause and clean it?

Thanks in advance.

[Zachery]

Disable ALL of your plugins and addons.

Enable each one one at a time, if your forum goes blank, that is the one breaking it.

[Mark.B]

Firstly, this is a lesson in only upgrading a test mirror board first!

What I'd do here...

1) Close your site for maintenance.
2) Disable each individual plugin manually in the admin cp plugins (not products) section.
3) Enable hooks in AdminCP > Settings > Options
3) Enable hooks in the config.php file.

You hopefully should now have the forum up.

Now, enable each plugin one by one and then retest the forum each time until you find the one that's breaking the forum.

[oatsy]

... I was back to the blank screen. Even with all plugins individually disabled.

Now I've uninstalled them all bar the vbulletin Blog and CMS that are vB default plugins (I have vB Suite but only use the forums, not Blog or CMS) and I still get the blank screen.

Mustn't have explained this properly. If the hook system is enabled in Options it doesn't matter if the plugins are all disabled or even uninstalled, I still have the problem.

[oatsy]

If it's any clue, when I say it's a blank screen there is nothing there at all. If I do a Page Source, there is no code at all.

[oatsy]

There's another major clue that I must have had a brain freeze over. I did the update to 4.1.10 in readiness to move to a new server. Did the update on the old server and it worked fine there. It was only when I moved it to the new server that the problem manifested itself, so that's obviously a strong pointer at something on the server. I'm thinking Suhosin maybe, as it's on the new server?

*In my defense ref not realising it was ok on the old server, I'd disabled pulgins in config.php for the upgrade and iitially assumed that was why I hadn't noticed. However, on reflection I'm almost certain I'd re-enabled Plugins after the update.

[oatsy]

I've now uninstalled the remaining two Plugins, being the default vB BLOG and CMS so the Plugins list is now empty. And re-uploaded all the 4.1.10 files. Neither made any difference.

[yo_daniel]

We run Suhosin too, and I'm experiencing similar issues.
By default Suhosin disables a bunch of php commands, and commonly the fix for this is to re-enable the individual commands which are required by the application.
The trick is trying to find which commands are required...
Commonly I find that enabling curl_exec, curl_multi_exec, exec, and eval, fixes most stuff. That's the next thing I'm going to try.
Be helpful if anyone knows definitively which of the default Suhosin blacklist commands are required by vBulletin...

[oatsy]

I found my problem.

After I'd uninstalled all plugins using Plugins & Products>Manage Products I had a look also in Plugin Manager. I've never actually had a need to go in there before but as I was searching for anything that might give me a clue I had a look. There were 4 items still in there. Turns out the other site admin had added them years ago when it was still a vB3.something and he was experimenting with a Joomla site. We didn't do that in the end and the redundant plugins must have been lurking there ever since, but caused no issues.

Once I moved the site to the new server we got the problem because this server doesn't allow http URL gets. And one of the plugin contents was:

ob_start();
require("http://www.domain.com/headgrey.html");
headstuff = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

As soon as I deleted the redundant URLs the problem went away. (If I'd needed to keep the plugin I could have coded the link differently, as it was an internal file anyway)

So that's probably an uncommon set of circumstances but it may be worth checking that after you've disabled all the plugins via 'Manage products' there aren't any strays that were added directly via Plugin Manager.