Drupal 6 module's page unresponsive

by Colin Calnan | March 26th, 2009 | Comments

Discovered a very upsetting scenario today while building out a Drupal 6 site. If you have the Update module enabled and drupal.org goes down your module admin page at <a href="http://www.example.com/admin/build/modules">www.example.com/admin/build/modules[/geshifilter-code] stops responding. Why? I think it's because somewhere in the Update module is a call to updates.drupal.org.

The quick and dirty solution is to temporarily disable the module via the system table in your database.

How do I do that?

  • Using phpMyAdmin or some other GUI tool or via the command link
    1. View the system table contents
    2. Find the row where filename is modules/update/update.module
    3. Edit the row and set it's status field to 0
    4. Refresh your modules page
  • Via SQL Query/command line

    UPDATE `system` SET `status` = 0 WHERE `filename` = 'modules/update/update.module'

I'm going to submit an issue about this and look into a possible solution. I was halted in my work for over an hour today because of this.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for those of you who do not backup before making any changes to your database.