Description of the problem

This is going to be a wild one I think. The client just purchased Snaptcha so we could include it (re-include it, actually – we had it pre EE7 but stopped using it in case there were php or EE7 errors) in the Freeform forms on the site, as FF’s honeypot is not working so great, and reCaptcha v2 is terrible, visually…

So I installed it locally, tested it, works fine. Cool. Sent it to production, did the upgrade, made sure the license was squared away, and immediately the front end, the homepage specifically (in a separate browser incognito mode so no shared cookies), dies. Like, dead-dead. (CP still works fine.) It presents this scary result:

Exception Caught
There was a database connection error or a problem with a query. Log in as a super admin or enable debugging for more information.
mysqli_connection.php:114

I uninstall it, and the site resumes normal operation on the frontend. Experimented a few times to make sure it wasn’t some weird coincidence, and it repeatedly dies with the above error every time it’s re-installed. Uninstall, and it goes back to normal operations.

Ok, so I thought, that’s weird, so let’s see what the staging site does, which is a close replica of production with a few things different – db is behind by like a year with the content updates, there is at least one other addon that is upgraded on staging but not on production, some minor template differences, but otherwise the server settings are identical as they’re in sibling directories, same PHP, etc..

I merge the same git branch to staging and push it up, wait for deployment, and repeat the upgrade/license update dance. Check the front end and.. no error??

So the bad news is, I cannot replicate this, currently, on a test/dev/staging site. If I absolutely have to, I can trash the staging site and remake it 1:1 with production (duplicate current db, current codebase, etc), but that is pretty drastic so I’m hoping you may have an inkling of what could be stomping it into the ground on the production server to make it feel like it is losing touch with the database while it’s installed?? Production is not set for debugging, and there isn’t anything in the developer logs in the CP from today.

We have several forms on a single page, so each one has an id associated with it so they won’t clash.

How To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior: 1. Click install on Snaptcha (initially it was already installed but on v2.2.0, and upgraded, which started this cycle; thereafter it’s install/uninstall) 2. Check front end… error message noted below. 3. Uninstall Snaptcha 4. Check front end, back to normal (e.g. site works normally).

Error Messages

Exception Caught
There was a database connection error or a problem with a query. Log in as a super admin or enable debugging for more information.
mysqli_connection.php:114

Screenshots / Videos / Template Code No screenshots, template code for the add-on is simple. In the Freeform code, I merely uncommented out the fields like below, to include them back in:

{exp:snaptcha:field id='33'}

My next step would be to go back through all of the Freeform template files and comment those tags OUT again, try installing Snaptcha and see if it still dies. But I can’t do this until late in the afternoon as the site does e-commerce and I can’t break it during their business hours.

Environment Details: - EE Version: 7.3.6 - Version: 3.3.1 - PHP Version 8.1 - MySQL Version 8.0.36 - OS: Ubuntu 20.04 - Web Server: it’s on Digital Ocean, I believe it’s running Apache as it does observe the .htaccess files.

Additional context For what it’s worth, the config file on this build is ridiculously complex. It uses SERVER_ROOT and other such variables (prod vs. staging) and conditionals, and local uses its own config.local.php file with overrides. However, since the staging server uses this same file (with one slight modification to the $SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’] variable), I’m not certain it could be behind it. There is nothing Snaptcha specific in it that I can see.

Thanks!!