php fatal error session.php line 71

[swimd]

compiler is disabled and always has been.

Magento 1.8.1.0

Nothing recently udated

No new extensions

Last update was the security patches.

I have been getting this error recently and randomly. When it occurs homepage displays blank white page, admin page shows only the login box. (a no you cannot actually login)

Error log contains alot (about 100)  of this following error:

PHP Fatal error:  Call to a member function getCode() on a non-object in /home/xxx/public_html/xxxx/app/code/core/Mage/Customer/Model/Session.php on line 71

Then it is followed by alot of:

PHP Fatal error:  Call to a member function getBlockName() on a non-object in /home/xxx/public_html/xxxx/app/code/core/Mage/Captcha/Block/Captcha.php on line 43

With a few of these here and there:

PHP Fatal error:  Call to a member function isRequired() on a non-object in /home/xxx/public_html/xxxx/app/code/core/Mage/Captcha/Model/Observer.php on line 70

The solution to make it go away, i delete everything in var/cache folder. Then all pages load fine until next time. About 2-3 days. Site gets about 300 visits per day with no recent increase or spikes.

But i would like a solution that makes it not happen

What could be the issues here?

[Brent W Peterson]

How are you saving sessions?

Is the issue only when you login to Admin?

[swimd]

No it just happens randomly. nothing specific causes it just time. out of nowhere, everything is blank pages with one of those errors.

[sellerstaruk]

Just to add my voice into this one: I've had this problem on three client sites - two are on 1.7.0.2 and the other is on 1.9.2.1.

On Saturday it happened twice to the client on 1.9.2.1 - each time, deleting var/cache and var/session resolved it, but it does feel like a bit of a ticking time-bomb until it happens again. 

All occurrences have happened since the latest security patch was installed - exactly the same symptoms as described below - blank screen on the frontend, skinless / js-less admin area login page with the error  PHP Fatal error:  Call to a member function getBlockName() on a non-object in .../app/code/core/Mage/Captcha/Block/Captcha.php on line 43 below.

Also looking on google I have a suspicion this is a wider issue (could be wrong, but https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=%22app/code/core/Mage/C... seems to suggest this is happening on quite a few sites sporadically - all the links I've clicked have stopped showing the error )

Hope this helps to diagnose the issue.

Mark.

[The Tankgirl]

We're having the same problem, even opened a thread about it just now.

Removing/emptying /var/cache solves the problem temporarily, and then after a day we're having the same problem again.

Patch 4755 has been applied, but didn't solve anything.

This all happened after we've applied the latest patches.

[scwchan]

Hi all,

We have this issue as well after installing the recent security patch SUPEE-6788 on Magento 1.9.2.1. Would others like to share their extensions so we could see whether it's an extension issue or magento security patch issue? 

Problem:

Frontent website suddently doesn't load stylesheet or images, only loads the product categories lists on the left

Backend website doesn't load load stylesheet or images, only loads the Usern Name and Password bar, with the error under it.

"Fatal error: Call to a member function getBlockName() on a non-object in <myserver>/public_html/app/code/core/Mage/Captcha/Block/captcha.php on line 43

Magento 1.9.2.1 with SUPEE-6788, with the following extension.

Extendware Full Page Cache

Extenward Cache Warmer. 

We would like to fix this issue over Christmas because it's like a ticking time bomb as some have suggested. Any suggestions welcome. 

[chiefair]

Oh, the config cache corruption issue...

[philpot]

I saw this issue too after installing SUPEE-6788. I initially tried fixing the errors directly, but the "Call to a member function getFunctionName() on a non-object" issue just bubbled to the surface from other points in the Mage_Captcha module.

I then disabled the module completely (including disabling at config level in app/etc/modules/Mage_Captcha.xml to disable observer behaviour). What this revealed was that the problems with the Captcha module are only a symptom of a wider problem with cache invalidation. I started seeing a load of exceptions with the message "Front controller reached 100 router match iterations".

This led me to the rather impressive work done here: https://github.com/AmpersandHQ/magento-ce-ee-config-corruption-bug. It identifies the cause of the caching issue and also has a handy script to replicate the issue, which is caused by a race condition where 2 different processes try to refresh the config cache.

Hope this helps!

[neal_swalk]

Do we have any solutiona to this? I'm suffering from the exact same random crashes with no apparant triggers. I'm running CE version 1.9.0.2

[scwchan]

https://github.com/AmpersandHQ/magento-ce-ee-config-corruption-bug