Cannot login to my Elgg site

Not with my admin ID, nor with an ordinary user test ID that I created.

When I try to login, that doesn't happen, and I am left at the home page (no error msg). I can get to all the public pages of the site, but obviously can't add a comment, upload a file, or perform any admin functions. Presumably ALL my users are similarly locked out. I do have access (via File Manager and other cPanel tools) to the back end.

This happened suddenly today. I left a comment on my site 9 hours ago. (But that was not a fresh login; I'm usually continuously logged in.)

I've made no changes in the past nine hours. I upgraded to 1.7.6 a few days ago (several days ago?). There have been no other changes. And there's been lots of user activity since  1/1/2011 (so it's evidently not any sort of 'new year' glitch.)

I disabled all plugins, and that did not help.

Help!

  • If I "Repair" the DB, from cPanel, is that a straightforward event, or are there other post-repair Elgg steps that I should expect to take (e.g. run upgrade.php or something else)?

  • rjcal, cim, ... Thanks for your guidance. Just Repaired DB. Here is the message (my bolding):

    sslego_elgg239 is now being repaired.

    sslego_elgg239.elgg_access_collection_membership   OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_access_collections OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_annotations OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_api_users OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_config OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_datalists OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_entities OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_entity_relationships OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_entity_subtypes OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_geocode_cache
    note : The storage engine for the table doesn't support repair
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_groups_entity OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_hmac_cache
    note : The storage engine for the table doesn't support repair
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_metadata OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_metastrings OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_objects_entity OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_private_settings OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_river OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_sites_entity OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_system_log OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_system_log_1283978602 OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_system_log_1286398078 OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_system_log_1288817293 OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_system_log_1288817297 OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_system_log_1288817298 OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_system_log_1288817299 OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_system_log_1291236506 OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_system_log_1293655780 OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_users_apisessions
    note : The storage engine for the table doesn't support repair

    sslego_elgg239.elgg_users_entity OK
    sslego_elgg239.elgg_users_sessions
    info : Found block that points outside data file at 228228
    warning : Number of rows changed from 80 to 173

    status : OK

    Repair Complete

  • Ok. I can log in now. Thanks very much, rjcal and cim.

    Is the general lesson learned here "Do not hesitate to check and repair the database?"

  • you're welcome Stephen! Anytime =)

    Yes, always check for databases errors and repair your tables. Cheers =)

    Rodolfo Hernandez
    Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison

  • Elgg uses the MyISAM table engine because it supports full text search. One downside is that tables can be corrupted by a crash. It looked like something like that happened with the session table. Glad to hear you got it working again. Kudos to rjcalifornia and Cim for helping out.

    Also, to be clear, 1.7.6 does not have any changes that would contribute to this.

  • Thanks for the info, Cash.

    As a non-expert, it can be hard to predict what steps are safe & easy, versus those that are fraught with danger and might foul everything up.

    It's good to know that repairing a DB is not a big deal.

  • After repairing my database (I had the same error and the same log!), I can authenticate me, but the site is incomplete.My database is imposible to clean completly?