Site not accessible fatal error

[CJH]

I have a major problem this morning in version 1.6.0.6. Yesterday the site was working, today neither the front or back office are accessible. There appears to be nothing wrong with the webspace or ISP.

 

Front office addresses www.wildplaces.co.uk and www.wildplacespublishing.co.uk (one of these forwards to the other) returns a blank page. Back office returns the following error:

 

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'SmartyException' with message 'unable to write file /homepages/36/d27743760/htdocs/wildplacespublishing/cache/smarty/compile/1b/f5/81/wrt550bf445ad37f4.66855975' in /homepages/36/d27743760/htdocs/wildplacespublishing/tools/smarty/sysplugins/smarty_internal_write_file.php:44 Stack trace: #0 /homepages/36/d27743760/htdocs/wildplacespublishing/tools/smarty/sysplugins/smarty_internal_template.php(201): Smarty_Internal_Write_File::writeFile('/homepages/36/d...', '<?php /* Smarty...', Object(Smarty)) #1 /homepages/36/d27743760/htdocs/wildplacespublishing/tools/smarty/sysplugins/smarty_internal_templatebase.php(155): Smarty_Internal_Template->compileTemplateSource() #2 /homepages/36/d27743760/htdocs/wildplacespublishing/classes/helper/Helper.php(114): Smarty_Internal_TemplateBase->fetch() #3 /homepages/36/d27743760/htdocs/wildplacespublishing/classes/helper/HelperForm.php(231): HelperCore->generate() #4 /homepages/36/d27743760/htdocs/wildplacespublishing/classes/helper/HelperForm.php(65): HelperF in /homepages/36/d27743760/htdocs/wildplacespublishing/tools/smarty/sysplugins/smarty_internal_write_file.php on line 44

 

This occurred after a reputable software company had access to files, but they say they only worked with their module (and did not touch the database, though I am not sure about this). This could be coincidence, but of course I am not sure.

 

I have ftp access still. Suggestions are very welcome for what to try to fix this. Is there a pointer to the problem in the error message? Could some module update (from Prestashop's module updates made yesterday) cause this? Can I delete anything in the cache to help? What to try?

 

 

Edited March 22, 2015 by CJH (see edit history)

[CJH]

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'SmartyException' with message 'unable to write file /homepages/36/d27743760/htdocs/wildplacespublishing/cache/smarty/compile/1b/f5

Two days later and little further forward. I have found others with similar problems, the advice being to look at permissions. As near as I can find, all permissions are correct. The host says permissions are okay as well. 1&1 is the webspace and says they will look at the problem (but that might be never ...)

 

Error reporting is turned on, hence the long fatal error message (similar for both front and back office). There are some references in different attempts to specific modules, such as homesliderpro. Using ftp to rename the module directory produces a white screen, no error message.

 

.htaccess file and php.ini files - renaming these makes no difference (and internally they appear correct).

 

However, I have discovered that although I can see all files and rename them and change permissions for existing files (and delete them), I cannot write to the web space using ftp. This *also* applies to the root *outside* the Prestashop installation directory and into any directories for my other websites.

 

I have two hints only. One is that prior to the failure I cleared the cache in Prestashop - I suspect that the shop was 'running' up to then using cached pages. My loss of ability to write to the server space is the same as causing the website failure: no file can write to cache, hence the fatal error.

 

The other is that some time prior to clearing the cache I set a country (using geolocation) to not be able to view the catalogue. Changing the tools/geoip directory name to avoid its use makes no difference to the outcome, but is there a setting in the database that controls this that I can change back (not a change to some other file, or if so where is that?). It makes no sense to me that anything I did within Prestashop could affect the webspace outside its directory, but I dislike coincidences: I set a limitation and now I am limited and unable to regain back office. I no longer think this is a smarty issue - smarty was only trying to write to cache, could not so the move was fatal.

 

Are there clues in any of this? Help, please.

[CJH]

I must answer this myself. In case anyone else has a similar issue, things I tried included:

 

Check the database for any entry relating to an ssl certificate (which should not be there). Mine had none, but if there was an incorrect entry it could have produced the same symptoms

 

Check for any database entry that might spuriously have locked out all contries. None there.

 

The hypothesis became that as no files were writable to the entire webspace, permissions might be involved (but were not: all checked out okay).

 

The host was 1&1 and, despite a number of messages online that they are not great at helping, on this occasion they were. They identified a quota error for total files exceeded, which apparently would have automatically increased (over what long time scale was not evident). By deleting files, the site began working again. There is a still an error to solve with why this situation could have arisen, but it made for a solution.