Missing Pluginns from admin/plugins

Something is seriously wrong now with my Elgg install. Multiple plugins have gone missing from admin/plugins panel. Some are obviously active & some aren't. All of the missing plugins are in the Mod folder with 777 permissions. These are things such as Roles that desperately need for giving moderator the Ban ability. Also "Moderators for Roles is missing yet obviously have multiple active mods on my server. This all started after bad server lock up/freeze that required doing full restore from backup. When adding Roles UI it can't find Roles anywhere on the Server thus unmet requirement. Also after the crash, My api key vanished from Izap Video causing it saying the remote server could not be connected for adding new videos. There are also other plugins now missing & it isn't obviously until need finding something specific that isn't accessible. This actually has me extremely worried that the entire server is self destructing.

  • How do you export/import just the user accounts from SQL?

  • What could be dropped from SQL for re-scanning all plugins into database?

    When deleting any "missing" plugins via FTP the server locks up.

    There must be some method for salvaging this crippled server(bad SQL) somehow.

  • Whatever... it is officially a doomed "Zombie" server... thanks

  • Any manual manipulation of the database without a very good knowledge of the database structure is very likely causing more problems than solving any! If you haven't already made it worse by now any tries to replace the users table or "re-adding" plugins' data will likely break it even more.

    The tables are not handled completely separate by Elgg. The data in the different tables is linked together in various ways. And if you try to replace just one table at a time you will lose any consistency.

    If you have trouble accessing the plugin page in the admin area due to a plugin causing an fatal error you can temporarily prevent the activated plugins from getting loaded by creating a file with the name "disabled" in the mod folder of your Elgg installation (content of the file doesn't matter it's only the name that matters). With this file present you should be able to get the plugins page loaded again where you can deactivate any plugins. Then these plugins stay deactivated also when removing the "disabled" file again. But this method won't help with plugins not listed in the first place.

    In any case I would suggest to disable the caching (turning any caching options off on the advanced settings page) just to be sure that no faulty cached files cause problems.

    With the unmodified database (if you still have it) I would suggest to check with phpMyAdmin if any tables are locked due to errors and if this is the case let phpMyAdmin repair this table.

    You could also use the DB Validator plugin (from https://github.com/Elgg/dbvalidator) to check the database for some broken entries (it can help with some invalid datbase entries of Elgg databases).

    If a plugin still doesn't show up and the plugin folder is definitely in your mod folder, please check again correct permissions, owner and group of the files and subfolders of this plugin. And again: are you SURE that you have no SELinux on the server? Have you asked the support? Maybe they have other suggestions knowing the sever setup better than any of us here for sure!

    Last straw: search the objects_entity table for the plugin name and delete the row (i.e. Elgg object) containing that name in the title column. This can help in some cases with plugins that don't show up anymore (it should after removing the row). But in any case: make a backup before doing any manual modifications!

  • My temp work around is make new plugin from the old & changing folder name/manifest so that it registers in the database as new plugin. This has allowed me regaining some functionality on the server replacing various "missing plugins" from the plugins folder thus regaining stability. The problem having now is that some "missing plugins" are currently active and thus can not over ride them such as my IP Tracker. Let me go through your response today for valuable insights. Much of my combating this problem has been done on "cloned" server or fresh server rebuild. This allows for me safely restoring when attempting finding the the mystery error in SQL. My production server is being used for exporting SQL data.

    Danke fur dbvalidator!!!

  • Thus dbvalidator found no database errors for repairing. My work around method is getting the ship back somewhat on course for now. Manually checking versus FTP mod dir for missing files now for making new modified duplicate plugins for regaining the lost functionality. Your insights and response are much appreciated since was on the verge of completely giving up on this server.