Sudden OJS crash/environment incompatability

[rhiannond]

Hi all, and thanks in advance for any help you can give us.

We've been successfully running OJS 2.3.4 for 18 months and recently had it suddenly collapse on us. Just white screen of death whatever we try. Investigating, there doesn't seem to be a problem with the software at all - when the database and system files are transferred to a local build, they work.
It doesn't seem to be a particular traceable error - it looks more like nothing is being run at all at a top level. We suspect that the hosting service that we are with has changed something in their PHP setup that is now interacting badly, but they claim they haven't changed anything at all.

The information on the PHP set up on our server is here http://www.historyitm.org/php_check.php
I suspect I've been staring at this for too long and it just needs fresh eyes. can anyone see any obvious area where the php set up is going to cause problems with OJS?

I searched the forums and couldn't find anything that seemed similar, but if there is pointing me to that would also be appreciated.

[JasonNugent]

Hi rhiannond,

According to your host's PHP information page, the build date for that version of PHP is Dec 15 2012 14:26:58, which was last week. Does that coincide with your problems? There is a clash between PHP 5.3 and older versions of OJS due to a Locale class. The solution is to either upgrade your OJS installation or to have your host run PHP 5.2 instead.

Regards,
Jason

[rhiannond]

Hi Jason
Actually our crash was on Nov 15th - it has taken us a while to work out what was going on to the extent that I felt happy to post here - but that could easily still be the problem.
Can we upgrade to a new version without losing our current data if we can't get our current version to work?

Rhiannon

[JasonNugent]

Hi Rhiannon,

Sure, there is an upgrade path to any newer version of OJS from the version you are currently using. You'd probably want to stick with the 2.3.x stable releases right now. Obviously, make backups of your database and your existing OJS installation (including your files/ and public/ directory) before beginning. If you've customized your installation you may want to examine those changes to make sure that you don't lose them during the upgrade process. Have a look at the docs/UPGRADE file in your OJS directory for detailed instructions.

Regards,
Jason

[rhiannond]

Hi Jason

thanks so much for this.

Rhiannon

[JasonNugent]

Hi again, Rhiannon,

Just thinking about this a bit more. While it is possible that a PHP upgrade on the server broke your OJS installation, it is probably also worth taking a quick look at the usual suspects, like directory permissions. OJS will generate blank white pages if the cache/ directory (or its sub directories) are not writable by the web server user. Just another thought.

Regards,
Jason