phpMyAdmin Fatal error: Call to undefined function __()

Question

Server running RHEL 7 and PHP 5.4.16. When I try to open /phpMyAdmin in my browser, I'm given the error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function __() in /usr/share/phpMyAdmin/libraries/core.lib.php on line 242

Call Stack
#   Time    Memory  Function    Location
1   0.0008  348000  {main}( )   ../index.php:0
2   0.0018  503144  require_once( '/usr/share/phpMyAdmin/libraries/common.inc.php' )    ../index.php:12
3   0.0252  4224464 PMA_Config->__construct( )  ../common.inc.php:304
4   0.0252  4224712 PMA_Config->load( ) ../Config.class.php:100
5   0.0265  4309888 PMA_Config->checkConfigSource( )    ../Config.class.php:849
6   0.0265  4311088 PMA_fatalError( )   ../Config.class.php:1169

I believe I've installed all required libraries and that apache has the proper permissions for the session.save_path directory, which were the issues previous times that this question had been asked. See: Call to undefined function __() error - phpMyAdmin

Can someone give me a hint based on that call stack? Here are the functions from the lines that the stack trace references, with the relevant line written in the left margin:

core.lib.php at line 242:

   /**
   * displays the given error message on phpMyAdmin error page in foreign language,
   * ends script execution and closes session
   *
   * loads language file if not loaded already
   *
   * @param string       $error_message  the error message or named error message
   * @param string|array $message_args   arguments applied to $error_message
   * @param boolean      $delete_session whether to delete session cookie
   *
   * @return void
   */
   function PMA_fatalError(
       $error_message, $message_args = null, $delete_session = true
   ) {
   /* Use format string if applicable */
   if (is_string($message_args)) {
       $error_message = sprintf($error_message, $message_args);
   } elseif (is_array($message_args)) {
       $error_message = vsprintf($error_message, $message_args);
   }

   if ($GLOBALS['is_ajax_request']) {
       $response = PMA_Response::getInstance();
       $response->isSuccess(false);
       $response->addJSON('message', PMA_Message::error($error_message));
   } else {
       $error_message = strtr($error_message, array('<br />' => '[br]'));

       /* Load gettext for fatal errors */
       if (!function_exists('__')) {
           // It is possible that PMA_fatalError() is called before including
           // vendor_config.php which defines GETTEXT_INC. See bug #4557
           if (defined(GETTEXT_INC)) {
               include_once GETTEXT_INC;
           } else {
               include_once './libraries/php-gettext/gettext.inc';
           }
       }

       // these variables are used in the included file libraries/error.inc.php
242    $error_header = __('Error');
       $lang = $GLOBALS['available_languages'][$GLOBALS['lang']][1];
       $dir = $GLOBALS['text_dir'];

       // on fatal errors it cannot hurt to always delete the current session
       if ($delete_session
           && isset($GLOBALS['session_name'])
           && isset($_COOKIE[$GLOBALS['session_name']])
       ) {
           $GLOBALS['PMA_Config']->removeCookie($GLOBALS['session_name']);
       }

       // Displays the error message
       include './libraries/error.inc.php';
    }
    if (! defined('TESTSUITE')) {
       exit;
   }
   }

common.inc.php at line 304:

304  $GLOBALS['PMA_Config'] = new PMA_Config(CONFIG_FILE);
     if (!defined('PMA_MINIMUM_COMMON')) {
         $GLOBALS['PMA_Config']->checkPmaAbsoluteUri();
     }

Config.class.php at line 100:

    /**
    * constructor
    *
    * @param string $source source to read config from
    */
   function __construct($source = null)
   {
       $this->settings = array();

       // functions need to refresh in case of config file changed goes in
       // PMA_Config::load()
100    $this->load($source);

       // other settings, independent from config file, comes in
       $this->checkSystem();

       $this->isHttps();

       $this->base_settings = $this->settings;
   }

Config.class.php at line 849:

    /**
    * loads configuration from $source, usually the config file
    * should be called on object creation
    *
    * @param string $source config file
    *
    * @return bool
    */
   function load($source = null)
   {
       $this->loadDefaults();

       if (null !== $source) {
           $this->setSource($source);
       }

       /**
        * We check and set the font size at this point, to make the font size
        * selector work also for users without a config.inc.php
        */
       $this->checkFontsize();

       if (! $this->checkConfigSource()) {
849       return false;
       }

Config.class.php at line 1169:

     /**
     * check config source
     *
     * @return boolean whether source is valid or not
     */
    function checkConfigSource()
    {
        if (! $this->getSource()) {
            // no configuration file set at all
            return false;
        }

        if (! file_exists($this->getSource())) {
            $this->source_mtime = 0;
            return false;
        }

        if (! is_readable($this->getSource())) {
            // manually check if file is readable
            // might be bug #3059806 Supporting running from CIFS/Samba shares

            $contents = false;
            $handle = @fopen($this->getSource(), 'r');
            if ($handle !== false) {
                $contents = @fread($handle, 1); // reading 1 byte is enough to test
                @fclose($handle);
            }
            if ($contents === false) {
                $this->source_mtime = 0;
                PMA_fatalError(
                    sprintf(
                        function_exists('__')
                        ? __('Existing configuration file (%s) is not readable.')
                        : 'Existing configuration file (%s) is not readable.',
                        $this->getSource()
                    )
1169            );
                return false;
            }
        }

        return true;
    }

Answer 1

For me it was different issue. I had given 777 permissions to phpMyAdmin forlder. When I changed it to 755, it worked fine.

Hope this will help someone.

Answer 2

If phpmyadmin was working fine and then suddenly stops working for no reason with a bizarre and useless error message, you might try deleting your php sessions.

rm -rf /var/lib/php/sessions/*

The exact location may very depending on OS and version, and this will delete all active sessions, not just yours, but it can fix some "suddenly stopped working" issues when you haven't changed anything and it was working fine before.

Answer 3

Error "The connection was reset"
File: /usr/share/phpmyadmin/libraries/common.inc.php

search:

$GLOBALS['PMA_Config'] = new PMA_Config(CONFIG_FILE);<br>

replace with:

$GLOBALS['PMA_Config'] = new PMA_Config();

Answer 4

Had the same Error message from phpMyAdmin :: FastCGI sent in stderr: "PHP message: PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function __() in /usr/share/phpMyAdmin/libraries/core.lib.php on line 245" while reading response header from upstream, client:

Solution that worked on my Fedora 22 server x86_64 using nginx : changing the owner and the group identifier from root:apache on the file /var/lib/php/session
to root:nginx
using the command sudo chown -Rfv root:nginx /var/lib/php/session.

Answer 5

The problem was the wrong permissions for the /etc/phpMyAdmin directory. The web server user, apache, had proper permissions for the session.save_path directory, but apache couldn't read from my config.inc.php file. Changing the owner of /etc/phpMyAdmin to the apache user and changing the permissions to 755 solved the problem.

Looking at the checkConfigSource() function in Config.class.php led me to believe that if the problem was with accessing the configuration file then I would have received the error 'Existing configuration file (%s) is not readable.' instead of Call to undefined function __() Does anyone know why that wasn't the case?

This was a pretty basic problem/solution, but unless someone suggests otherwise I think I'll leave it up since this exact problem/solution isn't addressed in other discussions of the Fatal error: Call to undefined function __() in /usr/share/phpMyAdmin/libraries/core.lib.php error when trying to start phpMyAdmin after installation.