Last modified: 2008-08-29 22:43:44 UTC
In LocalSettings.php make $wgDBname='SomeNonExistentDatabaseName'; Now browse http://your.wiki/ You will get this cryptic error: Fatal error: Call to a member function selectRow() on a non-object in /var/lib/mediawiki-1.11.0/includes/User.php on line 759 The program probably never expected all to go well except for $wgDBname. It would be much better to do some error checking and say "$wgDBname problem" instead of letting get all the way to that point, saying "Can't get into room 1403", when in fact the problem is really "Entire State of Louisiana gone."
When setting $wgDBname = 'bug12307'; I got a clean error message: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- MediaWikiDev has a problem Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading. (Can't contact the database server: Access denied for user 'xxxxx'@'localhost' to database 'bug12307' (localhost)) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's with current 1.10, 1.11 and trunk branch.
Me too now. Odd. Closing.
Now I half remember what I was doing. I had changed the name of the database not in LocalSettings.php, but instead in mysql, without restarting mysql, or even by the wrong method of $ mv db1 db2 OK, sorry for thinking this was the same as pointing $wgDBname to the wrong database.
OK, I found out what is going on and hereby restate the bug: I discovered a very interesting error, here offline on my simulated Internet. I used tcpflow to capture traffic. First remove your mysql server from the DNS, causing $ http_proxy= w3m -dump http://transgender-taiwan.org/ [transgende]蝶園 has a problem Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading. (Can't contact the database server: Unknown MySQL server host 'mysql.transgender-taiwan.org' (4) (mysql.transgender-taiwan.org)) The above is expected and proper. Note that the HTTP headers I sent causing the above did NOT any cookies. Now try again with a browser that sends cookies Cookie2: $Version="1" Cookie: transgender_wiki_UserID=2; transgender_wiki_UserName=Jidanni $ http_proxy= lynx -dump http://transgender-taiwan.org/ 蝶園 has a problem Fatal error: Call to a member function selectRow() on a non-object in /var/lib/mediawiki-1.11.0/includes/User.php on line 759 So the bug is: Mediawiki sees the cookies, and being hungry, skips its usual health check, gobbles them down without chewing first, and pukes out the contents of its guts embarrassingly. So we see we eat cookies too fast, skipping the stomach, directly to the large intestine. (Anyways, to restore normal operations I then at this point do # pdnsd-ctl add cname localhost mysql.transgender-taiwan.org)
Seriously, I cant reproduce the problem. I always get the clean error message.
