Updating from Events Calendar 4.1.4 to 4.2.1 Crashes My Website

[Jules Rudick]

Wordpress: 4.5.3
Events Calendar: 4.1.4
Events Calendar Pro: 4.1.3

While upgrading to Events Calendar 4.2.1, my entire site crashes and only displays the message, “The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred.” Deleting the Events Calendar plugin immediately brings my site back. I’ve had this issue since version 3.7 and have not upgraded since then.

The problem is specific to the part of my website that has the actual WP install: http://dev.lifewave.com/events/

I’ve tried updating using both WordPress and the manual update method. I’ve also attempted updating the plugins in different orders.

• This topic was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by Jules Rudick. Reason: Added more detailed information about issue
• This topic was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by Geoff B..

[Jules Rudick]

While updating my topic it was marked as “spam”? Hopefully leaving this comment will make the system happy that I’m not a spammer.

[Geoff B.]

Good evening David and welcome back!

Thank you for reaching out to us.

We are sorry to hear about your site crashing upon updating. This is terrible and certainly was not intended on our end.

I would love to help you with this topic.

As you might know, each website install is different in many ways, so it’s difficult to know exactly why this happened on your end. But, I would still like to offer some recommendations based on what I have observed with some of our other customers who unfortunately experienced something similar to what you described.

As a rule of thumb, it is worth trying to first upgrade the Events Calendar free plugin on it’s own (as opposed to trying to update the free AND the Pro versions simultaneously). There is a significant chance that this might solve your issue permanently. But since you already tried that, I believe we can rule this out.

The other most common reasons for error 500 messages are:

1. Lack of WP_memory (as defined in your wp-config.php file)
2. Corrupted .htaccess file in the process of updating (either because of a security plugin, a caching plugin or simply a webhost)

As a first troubleshooting step, could you please provide us with your complete system information in a private reply using the instructions found in the following link?

https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/sharing-sys-info/

Secondly, could you provide me with a screenshot of your settings under Events -> Settings -> General ?

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Jules Rudick]

This reply is private.

[Geoff B.]

Good evening David,

Thank you for writing back, for your detailed answer and for the system information.

Based on what you have sent me (and some other reports I have seen), I am pretty sure the culprit is PHP 5.3.29

In fact, the official WordPress recommendation is PHP 5.6+ (but so far I have found that PHP 5.4+ is sufficient for the time being).

Is upgrading PHP something that is possible on your install ?

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Jules Rudick]

Hi Geoff,

Unfortunately, upgrading PHP did not resolve the issue. My server is now running 5.5, but got the same result when attempting to upgrade. I rolled back to Events Calendar 4.1.4 and the test site is operational again, but I still cannot upgrade to 4.2.1.

[Geoff B.]

Good evening David,

I’m sorry this has not solved your issue yet.

But I’m glad the site is operational.

Could you please send me a copy of your WordPress theme / child theme in a .zip file link (via Dropbox or Google Drive) so that I can run some tests on my end ?

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Jules Rudick]

I was running a child for Twenty Eleven, but I disconnected it. I’ve been doing my testing with fresh installations of the Twenty Sixteen and Twenty Eleven themes to make sure it wasn’t a problem with the theme. Both Twenty Eleven and Twenty Sixteen are unmodified.

This morning a did a complete file and database restore and attempted the update again. Same results.

From Events Settings:
WORDPRESS VERSION
4.5.3
PHP VERSION
5.5.35
PLUGINS
The Events Calendar version 4.1.4 by Modern Tribe, Inc.(http://m.tri.be/1x)
NETWORK PLUGINS
–
MU PLUGINS
–
THEME
Twenty Sixteen

[Geoff B.]

Good evening David,

Thank you for writing back.

After a few extra tests and reviewing of this thread, there is something I believe might be worth checking into.

Because you mentioned that you are using a Windows server I’m wondering if there is not something wrong with the web.config file after the update.

Could you take a look if you get a chance ?

At this point, I believe the next logical step would be to activate the debug mode and take a look at the error logs after you try to upgrade if you are up for that: https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/tips-tricks/using-the-wordpress-debug-log

Best regards and thank you for sticking with us on this,

Geoff B.

[Jules Rudick]

I got some “ghost in the machine” results. I added the lines of code to the bottom of the wp_config to get the error log output. Updated the site and it blew up. No error log was generated, so I thought maybe the code needed to be higher in the wp_config, so I moved it to the top. I ran the update again and it worked! I tested it by removing those three lines and it blew up again. I replaced those three lines and it works again.

That doesn’t seem like it should have had any effect on the site functioning or not, but there it is.

I turned on Debug Display and got the following output on the site:

Warning: is_readable(): open_basedir restriction in effect. events/wp-content/plugins/\events/wp-content/languages/plugins/tribe-common-en_US.mo/tribe-common-en_US.mo) is not within the allowed path(s): (\;c:\windows\temp\;\events) in \events\wp-includes\l10n.php on line 556

Warning: is_readable(): open_basedir restriction in effect. events/wp-content/plugins/\events/wp-content/languages/plugins/tribe-common-en_US.mo/tribe-common-en_US.mo) is not within the allowed path(s): (\;c:\windows\temp\;\events) in \events\wp-includes\l10n.php on line 556

Notice: \events\wp-content\plugins\the-events-calendar\src\deprecated\Tribe__Events__PUE__Checker.php is deprecated since version 4.2! Use Tribe__Events__PUE__Checker instead. in \events\wp-includes\functions.php on line 3782

Warning: is_readable(): open_basedir restriction in effect. events/wp-content/plugins/\events/wp-content/languages/plugins/the-events-calendar-en_US.mo/the-events-calendar-en_US.mo) is not within the allowed path(s): (\;c:\windows\temp\;\events) in \events\wp-includes\l10n.php on line 556

[Geoff B.]

Good evening David,

Thank you for running those tests.

These are some pretty interesting results indeed. I am sorry that it resulted in the site crashing again.

I’m mostly glad that you managed to get things solved! Amazing work on finding a solution!

Thank you for relaying the error messages, I will pass them to Dev to see if there is something more we can do to prevent such cases from happening again.

You are welcome back on our support forums any time 🙂

For now, I am going to close this thread.

Have a great week!

Geoff B.

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