Debugging

Location: Administration > Server > Debugging

Debugging messages are intended to help Moodle developers. If you have a problem with your Moodle site and ask for help in a Moodle.org forum, a developer may ask you to turn debug messages on, in order to locate the cause of the problem.

How to turn on debugging

Go into the admin screens, and look under Administration > Server > Debugging. Set the Debug messages to ALL, and Display debug messages to Yes.

Once you have got the error message, and copied and pasted it somewhere, you are recommended to turn debugging back off again.

Debug messages

Template:Moodle 1.7From Moodle 1.7 onwards, further options are provided for controlling how to handle PHP error messages. The administrator can select the types of error messages to be displayed or logged.

The options for debugging include:

NONE: Do not show any errors or warnings
MINIMAL: Show only fatal errors
NORMAL: Show errors, warnings and notices
ALL: Show all reasonable PHP debug messages. When you want to find the cause of a problem with your site, this is probably best the setting to use.
DEVELOPER: extra Moodle debug messages for developers - If you turn this on, then PHP's error_reporting will be increased so that more warnings are printed. This is almost essential for developers, but not very helpful for anyone else.

Display debug messages

There is an option to choose whether to display error messages or simply record them in the server logs.

Debug email sending

Determines whether or not to enable verbose debug information during sending of email messages to SMTP server.

Performance info

The Performance info option determines whether performance info will be included in the footer of the standard theme (and some other themes). Performance info includes the time for the page to load, the amount of memory used to generate the page, cpu usage, load, and the record cache hit/miss ration.

What to do if you cannot get to the admin screens

If the error is stopping you even getting to the admin screens to turn on debugging, then you can set the debugging setting manually.

In config.php

In moodle/config.php you can add the lines:

$CFG->debug = 2047; 
$CFG->debugdisplay = 1;

$CFG->debug = 6143; 
$CFG->debugdisplay = 1;

Remember to remove those lines again when you have finished diagnosing your problem.

In the database

Using a tool like phpMyAdmin, execute the following SQL commands:

UPDATE mdl_config SET value = 2047 WHERE name = 'debug';
UPDATE mdl_config SET value = 1 WHERE name = 'debugdisplay';

To turn it back off, use the admin screens, or the commands:

UPDATE mdl_config SET value = 0 WHERE name = 'debug';
UPDATE mdl_config SET value = 0 WHERE name = 'debugdisplay';

(If you use a different database prefix, you will need to adjust those commands accordingly.)

Documentation