[support] Odd 'fatal error' but no problems in database and no changes to drupal files

[Nick Holden]

On Monday 28 November 2005 22:09, Chris Johnson wrote:
> The next step is kind of tough.  It's being generated on your home page, so
> among the questions I have is what you have as a setting for your default
> front page in the admin->settings menu (try
> http://www.workersliberty.org/admin/settings or umm,
> http://www.workersliberty.org/?q=admin/settings) to see if you can look at
> it.
>
> Also, it might be useful to see the error log, if you can get to it.  Try
> http://www.workersliberty.org/admin/logs/error or
> http://www.workersliberty.org/?q=admins/logs/error).
>
> I hope I have those non-clean URLs right, with the ?q= bits.
>
> You might try disabling the book module, if you can get there:
> http://www.workersliberty.org/admin/modules or
> http://www.workersliberty.org/?q=admin/modules.
>

Thanks, Chris, and although you were wrong about the book module you did make 
me look again at the fact the problem was showing up on every page, and 
therefore it had to be caused by something in a block which was called from 
every page. Sure enough I figured it out tonight - there was a custom-written 
module block which scanned the most recent fifty comments in order to list 
the five unique stories with most recent comments, and for the first time 
since the module was written six months ago, fifty comments was not enough to 
find five unique node ids. So the fifth search was for the content of a node 
with a null id. Hence the breakdown. 

I guess the lessons are (a) it's always what changed what broke it, and (b) if 
there's core code and user code it's the user code what broke it, too.

Thanks for your patience. I'll just go back to loving drupal now.


Nick


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