osTicket Fatal Error

a_frayn

At 4, this morning, I started receiving two tickets every ~10 minutes. The subject of the ticket is "osTicket Fatal Error" and the body is "Unable to connect to the database"

I've been searching to no avail. One thing I found was someone mentioning that the only time that very generic error message occurs is in main.inc.php. It's also an error message for two specific errors.

I took a bit of liberty and split it in two. Now it appears as follows:

if (!db_connect(DBHOST,DBUSER,DBPASS)) {

$ferror='Unable to connect to the database dbconnect';

}elseif(!db_select_database(DBNAME)) {

$ferror='Unable to connect to the database select';

Now, in theory there is no error which simply says "Unable to connect to the database" as both have either dbconnect or select added onto the string. So, I'm still getting these tickets being generated, but the message is "Unable to connect to the database" no select, no dbconnect. So I figured that that string must appear somewhere in the files of the program. So I downloaded the whole tickets folder. I did a multi-file search for that string, and came up with only the two instances above. Strange, so where is it generating that error string? I have no idea.

However, if it can't connect to the database, as it's claiming... how can it generate a ticket? How can I log into the system and see the old tickets, and the new error tickets it's generating, and even tickets that are being generated by actual users (by email)? I'm confused.

The only thing I can think of that can be causing this is that yesterday morning, our host migrated to a new server. One of the first level support staff tried to help us out. Didn't seem to get anywhere, but tried, something that's important in a good host. She's passed it along to a higher level of support.

Seeing as our host migrated us to a new server, you're probably wondering...

$DBHOST = localhost

mathman

Questions I would have are:

1) Is the database server running?

2) Has the username/password you're using been setup in the database?

3) Can you connect to the database via a command-line login? (Assuming you have command-line access in general.)

4) Were your osTicket database and tables migrated to the new server?

David

a_frayn

Thanks for the reply David! I think you missed a key point of my post, however, it's a long post, so I can't blame you.

So yeah, the server is running, the username and password is in the database, I don't have CLI access but I'd imagine that if I did, I'd be able to access the database, everything else about osTicket seems to be working fine, so I think that it was all migrated well.

mathman

Unless I'm missing something, the ticket is generated prior to it being inserted into the database - inserting it into the database would likely be the final step in the ticket creation.

To test the database connection, you could create a simple php file:

<?php

$db = mysql_connect(HOST,USER,PWD) or die(mysql_error());

mysql_select_db(DB, $db) or die(mysql_error());

echo "CONNECTED!\n";

mysql_close($db);

?>

Replacing HOST, USER, PWD, DB with your values. The mysql_error function should give you more information on why it didn't connect.

David

ntozier

Are you sure that it is generating a ticket? When my OSticket cannot talk to the database it sends me emails with the error, it doesn't open tickets.

I would try resetting the password for the mysql user in the db.

I would also make sure that user has the proper permissions on the db.

a_frayn

Are you sure that it is generating a ticket? When my OSticket cannot talk to the database it sends me emails with the error, it doesn't open tickets.
I would try resetting the password for the mysql user in the db.
I would also make sure that user has the proper permissions on the db.

It 100% makes the ticket, as I log in and see the ticket, and manually close all of them after they're made.

a_frayn

It has to be a cron job issue...

I logged into the email helpdesk@mydomain.ca which is kinda a ghost account. It's only used for OSTicket. Looked through the emails. It was obviously coming from the server, based on the info.

I then had a thought... I downloaded the contents of tickets.mydomain.ca, and deleted the contents of that folder on the server.

These emails kept on coming. Now since OSTicket wasn't on the server (just the database), it obviously wasn't then checking the email, and sending me an email to inform me that a new ticket was created. So what could cause it?

I looked at the times of the emails... 7... 7... 7... 7... that's when I deleted the contents of tickets.mydomain.ca.... 7... 7... 8.

What happens at exact five minute intervals? The cron job.

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/php /home/mydomain/public_html/tickets/api/cron.php

a_frayn

I deleted the cronjob and it continues. The old server must be running the cronjob, and the database must be deleted, or the password changed. I've informed my host.