MIVA fatal error

[Kiriyo]

I'm getting this message trying to log into MIVA admin. What's going on?

Fatal Error

Miva Merchant has encountered a fatal error and is unable to continue. The following information may assist you in determining the cause of the error:
Error Code: MER-ADM-00003
Description: Miva Merchant has not been initialized. Please use the MIVA Merchant Setup script to initialize the required data files.
Other Information:


And this one when I try to go into my store on the retail end:

Fatal Error

Miva Merchant has encountered a fatal error and is unable to continue. The following information may assist you in determining the cause of the error:

Error Code: MER-DBA-MYS-00001
Description: Unable to connect to database: Too many connections
Other Information:

[ocpxc02]

Re: MIVA fatal error

We've seen this on occassion as well. We're told that it is due to the server being overloaded.


Paul

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: MIVA fatal error

Have your host investigate; there could be a server problem, but this is also known to be caused by one particular combination of a bug in the Miva engine, a specific third party module and a specific configuration in your store related to that module.

[Kiriyo]

Re: MIVA fatal error

You're my host, David. I'm writing you even as we speak.
Thanks,
Kiriyo

[ocpxc02]

Re: MIVA fatal error

I'm w/ Hostasaurus as well. Did you guys figure it out?

Also, what is the magical combination that is known to cause problems? I haven't had the problem for over a month now, but I would like to know if we can do something to our config to avoid it in the future.


Thanks,
Paul

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: MIVA fatal error

I'm w/ Hostasaurus as well. Did you guys figure it out?

Also, what is the magical combination that is known to cause problems? I haven't had the problem for over a month now, but I would like to know if we can do something to our config to avoid it in the future.


Thanks,
Paul

I think we tracked it down to a module.

The other issue I mentioned is due to a bug in the 5.x release of the Empresa engine that can be triggered when you have the category page template module, a category with a large number of products, the "Show All" option still displayed in that category and a customer selects that option. If the number of products in the category in question is more than the number of simultaneous connections you are allowed to have to the mysql database, you can end up exhausting those connections and taking the store down. The cause of the problem is that as the module takes a look at each product, Miva Empresa is opening a new database connection for each query instead of properly re-using the existing connection, so in categories with a large number of products, you can end up with a huge number of connections just from that one customer's request.

Miva is working on a new mysql connector library that will fix the issue. MivaSQL stores won't have the issue. A temporary fix for stores that have big categories is to just remove the Show All option from the category template, then customers can't trigger that issue.

[Mark Johnson]

Re: MIVA fatal error

We are currently attacking this problem on two fronts. The Core 14 streaming update for Miva Merchant 5.5 will have a solution for the category issue. It is currently being worked on. While we don't have a firm release date, I would expect it within a month.

We are also preparing an engine update (5.07) that will include improvements in the MySQL connector. Again we don't have a firm release date yet, but it is also looking to be ready within a month.