WordPress MU

Two days ago, our WPMU 2.7.1 instance went dark. No error messages or anything. Just Chrome's message saying "Oops! Site not found" or whatever.

We restarted the AMP stack and got the "Error establishing a database connection" message. Ok, that's better. But this, of course, means that I must re-create the wp-config.php file by renaming or deleting the old one, then hitting the site to get the config screen so I can input the DB info.

That brings me to my first question. Why is it that when AMP stack is restarted, WPMU never comes back on its own? Why do I have to RE-enter the DB info? The old wp-config.php file and the new wp-config.php are line-by-line identical to each other! What was wrong with the old one?

However, upon re-creating the wp-config.php file through the setup form, the database connection info didn't "take" this time. It just sent me right back to the "Error establishing a database connection" message. I can do this ad infinitum and it will never connect. And I'm copying the db name, hostname, username, and password directly from the old file that used to work!

Nobody touches this database and server instance to change/reset/update anything without my say-so. And I certainly didn't do anything to it prior to its suddenly going dark. It was just humming along and BAM! Dead.

In the case it's not something wrong with the MySQL server, which someone is looking at as I write this, what can I look at next? How do I get out of this loop of fail? And how do I make it so that if AMP ever has to be restarted, it will restart gracefully instead of making me re-create the file?

Thanks.

It's not MU requiring you to recreate the config file. Chances are there's a plugin building up and crapping out, causing the db server to go down.

Also, you're still on 2.7?? Dude, upgrade. Schedule it in ASAP.

Upgrade is difficult in the black box environment I'm locked into with my corporate IT group. they won't let me do anything. drives me nuts. plus, we have a lot of testing to do with a crazy combination of plugins for each of hundreds of blogs. wish there were an easy way to flight check WPMU before applying upgrades.

still stuck in the loop, though. How am I going to get out of that loop enough to get to the plugin screen and disable them. or do I just rename the plugins directory, add a new one, and then re-add them all one by one until failure?

Hopefully there's an easier way. A logfile with an error pointing to the culprit plugin, perhaps?

Bummer. I just tried renaming plugins and mu-plugins to plugins.OLD and mu-plugins.OLD, then re-creating those directories as empty. Still caught in the same old loop.

This is a production system. I don't want to complicate things with an upgrade if it's possible to figure out why the old version failed first, get it running, and THEN upgrade. But if you think it'll be "cleaner" to try the upgrade, then I'll go with that advice. Let me know, please. And thank you.

wish there were an easy way to flight check WPMU before applying upgrades.

have a copy on a dev server. Check your stuff there, then roll it into production.

If corporate will go for that. :D

My bet's on the server config tho.