Fatal error!

This error can be encountered at least once in a while by any Joomla user.

One of the main reasons for this Joomla fatal error is that your Joomla has run out of memory.

At Bobcares, we often get requests from our customers to fix Joomla fatal error as part of our Server Management Services

Today, we’ll see more reasons for the fatal error and how our Support Engineers fix these.

Reasons why fatal error occur and fixes for it

A fatal error is a type of error that causes a Joomla to close or encounter an error on websites.

Don’t worry! Fatal errors are spontaneous and temporary. So, we can easily troubleshoot it.

Now, let’s see reasons why a fatal error can possibly have been thrown on the Joomla site and how our Support Engineers fix it.

Allowed memory size

Usually, a fatal error can result in a white screen on websites, The reason may vary from server to server depending on the software used, modules installed, PHP settings, etc.

One of the most common reasons for this fatal error is that Joomla has run out of memory. Then, while managing the Joomla site users may get an error like follows.

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 10485760000 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 262144 bytes) in /var/www/virtual/XXXXXXXXXXXXX/htdocs/libraries/src/Helper/UserGroupsHelper.php on line 169

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 10485760000 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 262144 bytes) in Unknown on line 0

Mainly, this happens when the sites are hosted on shared hosting. However, it may also occur in any server when the host is limiting the amount of memory that it can use.

So, when you access the Joomla admin panel you may get an error like,

So, our Support Engineers check the allowed memory size and alter PHP’s memory limit in accordance with the server settings.

Incompatible problems behind Joomla fatal error

Recently, one of our customers had moved the Joomla site from one package to another. But, after transfer he got an error as below.

Fatal error: 'break' not in the 'loop' or 'switch' context in mysitedomain/plugins/system/admintools/admintools/pro.php on line 2128

On checking, our Support Engineers found that a PHP file called pro.php no longer existed in Admin tools. Also, Admin Tools does not have a file called pro.php in Joomla 3.x or 2.5.

Here, the customer had moved her old website with the old version of the admin tool from a server with PHP 5 to a new server. The new server has PHP 7. Due to the incompatibility it generated an error message.

So, we renamed the file and installed a new version of the admin tool. Everything worked fine after the change.

[Having to fix Joomla fatal error? We’ll fix it for you.] 

Conclusion

Sometimes, Joomla fatal error can occur due to insufficient memory size or because of problems with the admin version with the PHP version. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers fixed different types of fatal errors.