CRM-1621 A non-recoverable error - Reconsider?

Hi guys, here's a bit more troubleshooting information. I'm experiencing this issue with CiviCRM version 1.6.8022, as a module to Drupal version 4.7.4.

Replication steps for me:
1) From CiviCRM Home, click on Find Contacts
2) Select Individuals, then Search
3) From the search results, click on the Name of any of the contacts
4) Click on the Edit button next to the contact name.
5) Change any of the Name and Greeting information (I chose the Last Name in 2 instances)
6) Click on the Save button
7) The error messages displayed are:

===================
backTrace

/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Error.php, backtrace, 226
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/CRM/Utils/Request.php, fatal, 109
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/CRM/Contact/Form/Edit.php, retrieve, 159
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Form.php, preProcess, 277
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/StateMachine.php, buildForm, 143
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/QuickForm/Action/Next.php, perform, 64
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/packages/HTML/QuickForm/Controller.php, perform, 195
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/packages/HTML/QuickForm/Page.php, handle, 95
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Controller.php, handle, 173
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/CRM/Utils/Wrapper.php, run, 72
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Invoke.php, run, 427
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Invoke.php, form, 166
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/CRM/Core/Invoke.php, contact, 80
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/modules/civicrm/drupal/civicrm.module, invoke, 284
, civicrm_invoke,
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/includes/menu.inc, call_user_func_array, 418
/home/piwcomm-cvs2/piwcomm/htdocs/drupal/index.php, menu_execute_active_handler, 15

Sorry. A non-recoverable error has occurred.
Could not find valid value for ct

Return to CiviCRM menu.
===================

I'll attempt to provide a screenshot in a sec...

Further notes:

• Clicking on the "Return to CiviCRM menu" link actually takes me back to the Drupal Home, not the CiviCRM Home
• Upon clicking on the Save button (after the contact info has been edited), sometimes it will work and other times it won't. Replication rate is about 50%, though, so it's crippling the system a fair bit..
• Once I get the error messages (see screenshot), clicking the browser Back button will return me to the unedited contact record. Re-editing it and re-submitting generally yields the same results (i.e. failure)

whats your mysql version? are u using utf8 characters in your data entry?

seems like there is an issue with storing and retrieving your session. we've had sporadic reports of this

• MySQL version 4.1.11
• All tables in the "drupal" database are of MyISAM type (all CiviCRM tables have the civicrm_ prefix)
• There is an interesting mix of utf8_general_ci and latin1_swedish_ci collation tables. I'll change that all to utf8_general_ci for consistency, although all the civicrm_xxxxx tables are of utf8_general_ci collation.

For character entry: I believe they're all utf8 characters, but I'm not sure how to confirm that (feel free to enlighten me here...). That being said, when we installed CiviCRM, some of the sample contacts had their names jumbled (e.g. Mrs Chetan Y Ã...Â?Ã?â?¦chowski Sr, Mrs Alice P Ã...Â?Ã?â?¦chowski Sr, Dr BrzÃ?â?¢czysÃ...â??aw V Grant Jr, etc.) - how all of these "Ã...Â?Ã?â?¦" characters appeared at the front end of these last names I'm not sure. In fact, I was attempting to fix those when I ran into the "non-recoverable error " issues, although I tried with other names that don't have these funky last name prefixes (some new contacts I created), and the issue came up anyway. Further thoughts?

yeah, can u change the session table in specific to be the same charater set and collation as the civicrm tables. also make sure you truncate the session table after u r done

its a session problem and some utf8 characters are wreacking havoc with your session

Thanks for your help so far, Donald. I changed all of the tables in our "drupal" database to have the utf8 character set and utf_unicode_ci collation (what appears to be the default for CiviCRM). I then truncated the sessions table as suggested, re-tried and still failed. I then shutdown IE and Firefox (I had CiviCRM open in both browsers), re-truncated the sessions table, gave it another shot with a fresh browser session, and still no luck.

I mentioned above that it does work some times (i.e. the data for a specific contact does get updated successfully), but doesn't most of the time. If this was a session issue, I suspect it would never work - especially inside the same session. So I'm wondering if it may be something else.

The backTrace data suggests the code consistently chokes in .../civicrm/CRM/Utils/Request.php, circa line 109. Other than the backTrace feature, is there a debug logging feature in CiviCRM that I could turn-on or look-up and trace the code for when it DOES work, and possibly compare? [forgive my newbieness...]

1. we dont have a trace feature as yet. the problem is definitely session related

2. what version of php are u using?

3. Do other civicrm operation work. can u click around and see what happens

4. if u get on IRC (irc.freenode.net, #civicrm) i can help u online, which might be slightly faster

This is definitely an install specific issue involving utf-8 / drupal / civicrm. closing since this does not involve any code changes to civicrm