Evaluating fatal errors received during vBulletin Operations.

[Wayne Luke]

If you install/create plugins and products, then you can receive a fatal error that is similar to the one below:

/home/********/public_html/vb/global.php(384) : eval()d code on line 23

These errors are caused by faulty code within specific plugins within your system. Each plugin is evaluated at runtime and the results output.If their code is incorrect they cause these errors. At first glance it is almost impossible to determine where the error occurs but with a little knowledge you can find where the error is occuring and contact the plugin author for a fix.

First we need to find out where the error is occuring. If you look at the error message you can find exactly which hook is causing the problem.

The first portion tells us where the hook resides: /home/********/public_html/vb/global.php(384)

This states that it is in global.php on line 384.

If we open global.php in a full-featured text editor like Textpad, then we can go to that line and see what hook is being called. In vBulletin 3.7.0, this results in the following line:

    ($hook = vBulletinHook::fetch_hook('global_start')) ? eval($hook) : false; 

Where it says "fetch_hook", that tells us what hook it is looking for. In this case it is the global_start hook.

So now we know what hook to look for but we have to find out which plugin. Go into your Admin CP and scroll down on the left to "Plugins and Products". Open the control group and select Plugin Manager. You will see all your plugins listed on the right but they are grouped by product. We want to group them by Hook Location so click on that link in the table header.

Scroll down to where it says "Hook Location : global_start" and you will see all your plugins for that hook. If you're lucky and go light on the addons then you might only have one plugin and this phase is complete. If you have multiple plugins, then you need to disable them one at a time until the error resolves itself. The last disabled plugin is your culprit. At this point you can forward the error that you receive to the plugin author along with your vBulletin version so that they can help you.

[Wayne Luke]

You receive an error similar to:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 35 bytes)

PHP is running out of memory. Add this line to your config.php file under <?php:

ini_set('memory_limit', 32 * 1024 * 1024);