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jgravois's avatar

My main work project has the White Screen of Death

Yesterday I was trying to move my project to a public site on Digital Ocean using Forge for my client to see my progress. I pushed my latest changes to GitHub before my attempt. Then I added a .end.testing.php file to the project using Forge's settings and pushed that in another commit. Lastly I pushed another commit to try to trigger Forge's auto-deploy.

Unable to get DO/Forge to work, I went back to the local environment to get back to work and when I refreshed my local environment, I got the White Screen. I checked the php log and it had no errors and the developer's console in Chrome just gives me a 500 error (not very helpful). I am not getting the helpful Laravel error messaging.

Thinking I knew enough GIT to recover, I ran 'git log' and then git reset --hard af2f7569e3 which should have rolled back the last commit named "Initial Commit to Forge." Still White Screen. I ran git reset --hard 4e9ab0af5c8078 which was the commit BEFORE I even thought about Forge named "Preparing for testing domain" on GitHub -- this should have erased that .env.testing.php file. Still White Screen.

Totally panicking, I commented out EVERYTHING in routes.php and added the following to try to get SOMETHING on the screen but it is still blank:

Route::get('/', function()
{
    return 'Hello World';
});

What else could I try to recover my main work project?

Thanks in advance!

0 likes
7 replies
mrterryh's avatar
Level 2

Check the Apache/Nginx error logs.

1 like
jgravois's avatar

The last entry was "FastCGI: process manager failed"

I had MAMP PRO restart the server and saw 'Hello World.' I removed the commenting from routes.php and the site is back.

Thanks for being the "calm during the storm."

Now I can work on the project AND fight the good fight with Forge/DO.

2 likes
ax3lst's avatar

Did you make a fresh laravel project to check if it's caused by your code or by your server/local machine?

Edit: Oh @mrterryh was faster :D

1 like
mrterryh's avatar

Haha! You may want to check out Vagrant by the way. Jeff has some great lessons on them too. Up until a few months back, I was still using MAMP. After switching to Vagrant, I haven't looked back.

1 like
jgravois's avatar

@ax3l, that too would have been a good step to try and also would have shown the FastCGI issue.

I am starting an Evernote on "Project Disaster Recovery" and it starts with [1] Check Apache/nginx Logs [2] Create fresh and separate project to verify environment [3] Roll back latest git commit

I'm sure I will grow this First Aid kit in the future.

Thanks for the assist!!!

CraftThatBlock's avatar

As mentioned above, Vagrant (with Homestead) is epic. It's also the closest you can get to a "production" environment like Forge.

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