DokuWiki

It's better when it's simple

User Tools

Site Tools


bugs

Reporting DokuWiki Bugs

Every software has bugs. We try to ship the best possible version of DokuWiki every time, but errors happen. This page is here to help you with reporting bugs you might encounter.

Make sure it is a Bug

Before you report something, try to research if the problem you encounter really is a bug. Maybe it is intended behavior for some reason? Maybe there's a setting you could tune?

You should also search the forum if people had the same problem before. Maybe there's a fix already?

However, if still in doubt, just open a bug report. We can always close it should it turn out to not be a bug.

Check if the problem is already reported

All DokuWiki bugs should be reported in our bug tracker at GitHub located at: https://github.com/dokuwiki/dokuwiki/issues. For bugs in plugins and templates use the plugin's own bugtracker — you'll find a link to that on the plugin's documentation page.

Use the search to check if your problem already has been reported. Also make sure you search through closed bugs as well — the bug might have been fixed already in development.

If the bug was reported already, check if you can provide additional information to aid fixing the bug. See below on how.

Report a Bug

As mentioned above, DokuWiki bugs have to be reported at https://github.com/dokuwiki/dokuwiki/issues. You will need a free GitHub account to do so. Please do not report bugs anywhere else (IRC, Twitter, Forum). The Bug Tracker at GitHub is the only canonical way to report a bug. Again: report plugin bugs in the plugin's bug tracker.

When reporting a bug you should try to include as much information as possible that helps developers with identifying the problem.

This can include:

  • DokuWiki version
  • Operating system of the server and client
  • The used web server
  • The used PHP version
  • The used browsers (try multiple)
  • Everything that's special about your setup (plugins, template, auth backends, weird network config, etc.)
  • Exact steps to reproduce the problem
  • Screenshots
  • What did you try to fix the problem and what where the exact results?

It is especially important to gather exact error messages! See if you can find error logs from the web server and the JavaScript console (see below).

Please also read How to Report Bugs Effectively for more tips on submitting useful bug reports.

How to obtain additional info

As mentioned above, DokuWiki developers need detailed error messages to debug a problem. Sometimes those are printed directly to the screen, but sometimes they aren't. In those cases you might want to check the following options:

Server/PHP Error Logs

Whenever something goes fatally wrong, PHP will just stop processing your request. This usually results in a blank or partially rendered page. Sometimes errors are less grave but things are still missing.

In all of those cases PHP will log an error message to some log file. Where exactly that log file resides is different from system to system. Errors might be logged to the web server's error log, the system global log or a specific PHP error log. This is configured in the error_log directive in php.ini.

Typical locations are:

  • /var/log/apache2/error.log
  • /var/log/apache/error.log
  • /var/log/httpd/error.log
  • /var/log/syslog

If you are on a hosted server, best ask your provider where to find that log. If you don't have access to php.ini and can't find the log file you could also try adding the following to the .htaccess file in your DokuWiki root folder:

php_value display_errors 1
php_value display_startup_errors 1

That may send the error message to the browser.

Another solution might be the showphperrors plugin, it could be able to show the error in the browser in some cases.

DokuWiki Error logs

Since the Igor release (July 2022), DokuWiki logs also errors. Via admin interface you can use the LogViewer. If the LogViewer cannot reached, you can find the log files in your file system in [wiki_folder]/data/log/error/<date>.log.

JavaScript Console log

Sometimes things go wrong on the client side (inside your browser). To figure out what, you will need to access the JavaScript console of your browser. To do so use the following keyboard shortcuts:

Browser Windows/Linux Mac
Chrome Ctrl + Shift + J Cmd + Opt + J
Firefox Ctrl + Shift + K Cmd + Opt + K
Internet Explorer F12, then click on the “Console” tab
Safari Cmd + Opt + C

If you see any errors (usually shown in red) in the console, go to your config manager and disable the “compress” setting. Reload the page and check the JavaScript console for errors again.

If you find errors in the JavaScript console you should always attach them to your bug report. Preferably the ones found with the “compress” setting disabled. However, sometimes errors only show up with “compress enabled” — in that case send us these error messages.

Recently opened tasks

bugs.txt · Last modified: 2023-12-12 22:58 by Aleksandr

Except where otherwise noted, content on this wiki is licensed under the following license: CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International Donate Powered by PHP Valid HTML5 Valid CSS Driven by DokuWiki