Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/29506 Post a follow up: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/29506 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: system.module Category: bug reports Priority: critical Assigned to: nedjo Reported by: nedjo Updated by: nedjo -Status: active +Status: patch (code needs review) Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/theme-region-error-catching.patch (5.73 KB) I'm still not quite sure what the issue is, but clearly better error handling is needed. A particular issue is the scenario where a site admin upgrades a Drupal install without removing non-upgraded themes, or, on a new install, tries to install non-upgraded themes. As things stand, either of these could lead to unusable themes being the default, and all blocks disappearing. The attached (initial, untested) patch adds error handling to both updates.inc and system.module. New for allinstalls: * theme region initiation return FALSE on failure TRUE on success. * on initiation failure, theme is disabled, and, if it was set to default theme, bluemarine is substituted, with message given Updating: * tests if current default theme has been upgraded, and if not sets bluemarine as the default, issuing a notice * tries to initialize blocks for each enabled theme and, on failure, disables the theme. This should help prevent upgrade problems. If anyone has a chance to review and test this, I'd appreciate it, as I don't at present have a test install to upgrade. nedjo Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Wed, 24 Aug 2005 03:10:30 +0000 : nedjo Following the introduction of extentendable regions, see this issue [1], several users have reported problems: "A fresh install of Drupal with bluemarine displays blocks correctly, but when I switch the default theme to pushbutton, all the blocks disappear. They do show up in ?q=admin/block, but just with the yellow helper boxes, no blocks are really displayed.--Goba " "Same problem as Goba. The "region" field in the blocks table is sometimes blank. This makes many themes almost unusable in a Drupal default install. I don't know how the fields are blank, but the following SQL helped me get back to theme development: UPDATE blocks SET region="left" WHERE region=""--Thox " "another confirmation. I found out about the exact same sql query as Thox to fix it:) We came across this in an update. The theme had the regions defined, but since it was a non-default theme the blocks dissapeared. A drupal site, without a navigation block is simply useless.--Ber " The issue suggests a bug in the initiation of theme blocks. When a new theme is enabled, it's supposed to be initiated with blocks based on the default theme's blocks. I'll post a fix ASAP. [1] http://www.drupal.org/node/16216 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Wed, 24 Aug 2005 04:11:57 +0000 : nedjo I can't reproduce the reported issue with a clean install. Are the themes causing these problems "updated" (are they phptemplate-based or, if not, do they have _regions() functions)? The specific problem seems to be that the region field isn't being set when block regions are initiated. Here's the relevant portion of function system_initialize_theme_blocks(): <?php       // If the region isn't supported by the theme, assign the block to the theme's default region.       if (!array_key_exists($block['region'], $regions)) {         $block['region'] = system_default_region($theme);       } ?> This is executed if a newly-enabled theme doesn't have blocks already assigned to it. It gets the default region's settings--except the region. This code portion tests whether the default region's region is available in the newly-enabled theme, and, if not, substitutes the theme's default region. This would all fail if the theme wasn't returning any regions--but any phptemplate theme, or the core ones, should be.... Anyone see what's going wrong?