Matomo Not Working after full removal/reinstall 2020

WhalenTeam · July 8, 2020, 2:03am

Hi all,
I’ve been using Matomo/piwik since about 2012 as a yearly paying/donating user. I have it installed on JustHost.
I started experiencing trouble with goal tracking last year, (presumably after a JustHost server update) but seemed to “fix” it by dropping the “https://” off my Goal tracking URLs.
By “fix”, I mean it worked part of the time: sometimes errors would show, so I would refresh the widget several times until the errors disappeared. Last week, the same errors started appearing on the “Visits Over Time” widget, and never recovered.

I deleted the entire install of Matomo, including my database, and re-installed with a fresh new database, and I am still getting the same errors.

When I try to run a System Check, I get this fatal error:
The following error just broke Matomo (v3.13.6):
Illegal length modifier specified ‘f’ in s[np]printf call
in /home3/whalenw1/public_html/matomostats/vendor/twig/twig/src/Cache/FilesystemCache.php line 65

Can anyone please help? I have no idea how to go about fixing this.
Thanks in advance!

Lukas · July 8, 2020, 9:24am

Hi,

This seems like a very weird error I have never seen before. But the fact that it is in the code that is loading the template cache makes me confident that deleting the cache (so everything in the tmp/ directory will fix it.

WhalenTeam · July 8, 2020, 12:06pm

Hi Lukas, thanks for the reply.
I just did that and still get the same error.

Also, I noticed that I was getting a “site not secure” notification in my browser, so I installed the “Force_SSL” plugin, which fixed that browser error, but now doing a system check gives me a suggestion to disable/uninstall the plugin?

WhalenTeam · July 8, 2020, 7:30pm

Update:
Spoke to support at JustHost, and they cleared the PHP opcache for me.
I also FTP’d back in a cleared out the tmp folder again as you suggested.
Still getting the same fatal error.

According to JustHost support, their servers meet all the minimum requirements to run Matomo:
Hosting Package - JustPak
Server Name - just2038
cPanel Version - 86.0 (build 22)
Apache Version - 2.4.43
PHP Version - 7.3.19
MySQL Version - 5.7.23-23
Architecture - x86_64
Operating System - linux
Path to Sendmail - /usr/sbin/sendmail
Path to Perl - /usr/bin/perl
Perl Version - 5.16.3
Kernel Version - 4.14.135-214.ELK.el7.x86_64

Any ideas?

Lukas · July 8, 2020, 7:54pm

The error is occurring not in the Matomo code, but when Twig (the template engine used to display pages) tries to move some cache files around.

github.com

twigphp/Twig/blob/1.x/src/Cache/FilesystemCache.php#L65


        clearstatcache(true, $dir);
        if (!is_dir($dir)) {
            throw new \RuntimeException(sprintf('Unable to create the cache directory (%s).', $dir));
        }
    }
} elseif (!is_writable($dir)) {
    throw new \RuntimeException(sprintf('Unable to write in the cache directory (%s).', $dir));
}

$tmpFile = tempnam($dir, basename($key));
if (false !== @file_put_contents($tmpFile, $content) && @rename($tmpFile, $key)) {
    @chmod($key, 0666 & ~umask());

    if (self::FORCE_BYTECODE_INVALIDATION == ($this->options & self::FORCE_BYTECODE_INVALIDATION)) {
        // Compile cached file into bytecode cache
        if (\function_exists('opcache_invalidate') && filter_var(ini_get('opcache.enable'), FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN)) {
            @opcache_invalidate($key, true);
        } elseif (\function_exists('apc_compile_file')) {
            apc_compile_file($key);
        }
    }

I honestly don’t have any more tips as the error message isn’t that helpful.

WhalenTeam · July 8, 2020, 8:33pm

So, are you saying its a problem on the JustHost server?
If so, do you (or anyone) have a suggestion(s) on where I can host Matomo software other than JustHost without any issues? (shared hosting platforms?)

At this point, the only thing I really do on JustHost is use Matomo analytics, so I have no loyalty to staying there. I just want my Matomo to work.

WhalenTeam · July 10, 2020, 4:13pm

Can anyone PLEASE help with the above issue? (see original post)
I have been running my business for the last 7 or so years using Matomo/Piwik (as a paid subscriber) to track, and it is completely broken now. I don’t want to switch to another tracking option.

Lukas · July 11, 2020, 11:19am

Hi,

There is little I can do to help you as the error doesn’t happen in Matomo code and I have not seen anyone ever report this issue before.
Therefore, I’d recommend you to contact your host about this as they are the only ones who know how their PHP setup works exactly.

In general I can only find one report of this error on the internet (and it doesn’t make any sense as renaming files should not call printf in any broken way)
https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3152749

And this seems to indicate that there might be a bug in PHP with exactly your setup where again only your host can help you troubleshoot it.

BTW: I really urge you to change the password of your account as you have posted it on a public website and even if I have already removed it, people (or bots) might already have seen it.

BaronMunch · February 19, 2021, 8:04pm

WhelenTeam,

Were you able to find a solution to this problem? I am having pretty much the same issue.

Thanks

WhalenTeam · February 21, 2021, 8:06pm

No, I was not able to find a solution for this problem.
I ended up paying for Matomo hosting so I could continue to use Matomo for tracking.

It’s not ideal though - when I hosted it myself, I could see updated counts of total daily visitors to my site in real time, but on the Matomo hosting platform, those numbers are only updated every 5-6 hours or so.