Known issues in Acquia Cloud¶

Environment variables are unavailable in the CLI for PHP 7.3.¶

PHP 7.3 introduces a change to variables_order, removing environment variables ($_ENV) from CLI usage.

Workaround – Downgrade to PHP 7.2.

Older versions of Drupal 7 are not compatible with PHP 7.2.¶

Only Drupal 7 versions of 7.61 or greater are compatible with PHP 7.2. When you create or import a Drupal 7 website on Acquia Cloud, ensure you select a compatible version of PHP.

Memcache configuration and upgrades for Drupal 8 requires additional steps.¶

Although Acquia recommends the use of the Memcache API and Integration module with Drupal 8-based applications, the module is undergoing rapid development. Before you upgrade the Memcache API and Integration module, review Using Memcached and the README.txt file in with the module for updated installation and configuration instructions.

PHP 7 deprecates the memcache class.¶

The php-memcached extension provides Memcached support in PHP 7 environments, and the memcached PHP class for interacting with Memcached storage. The extension does not provide the memcache (no d) class previously provided by the PECL memcache extension in PHP 5.x environments.

This change will not affect most users, as the Memcache API and Integration module supports both classes. However, your application may use other tools relying on the deprecated memcache class, which can cause website issues if you upgrade PHP to version 7. SimpleSAMLPHP, for example, is still affected by this issue.

Using SimpleSAMLphp with PHP 7.2 displays errors in log files.¶

Using SimpleSAMLphp on a website hosted on Acquia Cloud using PHP 7.2 may see entries in their PHP log files similar to:

PHP Deprecated: The each() function is deprecated. This message will be suppressed on further calls.

These warnings are harmless and will be removed in a future release of Acquia Cloud.

PHP 7.3 does not support the ssh2 extension.¶

The ssh2 extension has not yet published a stable release that supports PHP 7.3. Once this issue has been resolved, Acquia will evaluate including a stable release of the ssh2 extension in Acquia Cloud.

Acquia Cloud continues to display terminated pipelines jobs.¶

Jobs in the Acquia Cloud pipelines feature terminate after 60 minutes, but may continue to display in the Acquia Cloud interface for up to two hours.

Acquia Cloud displays a zlib “freed prematurely” message when inspecting tasks.¶

When inspecting the output of any successful or failed task, the final line is: zlib(finalizer): the stream was freed prematurely. This message can be ignored.

The Backups page may not list all available backups.¶

The Backups page in the Acquia Cloud interface lists recent backups for the Acquia Cloud environment. However, there is a delay between the time when Acquia Cloud creates a backup and when the Backups page displays it. As a result, the page may not yet display the most recently created backups, or display older backups that are no longer available for download or for restoring the database.

Workaround – You can connect to your server using SSH, SFTP, SCP, or rsync, and download the backup files from the /mnt/files/[site].[env]/backups directory. For more information, see Downloading database backups from the command line.

The server resize Cancel button does not always work as expected.¶

In the legacy Acquia Cloud interface, when a user clicks Resize and then clicks Cancel, occasionally the cancel button does not dismiss the dialog box.

XML is not an acceptable file type in Support tickets.¶

The acceptable file listing on the customer-facing ticket submission page lists XML as an acceptable file type, but XML files are not accepted for upload.

Workaround – Place the XML in a .zip file, and then attach the .zip file to the ticket.

The active domain for an environment cannot be changed.¶

The active domain for an environment defaults to the first top-level domain name, with or without the www prefix, and cannot be changed. Environments containing no top-level custom domains use the Acquia default domain as the active domain.

Unicode characters and emoji are not supported in branch names.¶

If a branch name contains a Unicode character, such as an emoji, users will receive a Failure due to fatal system error message when attempting to switch to that branch. This error affects all Acquia Cloud systems, including the pipelines feature.

Git checkouts fail after reporting non-existent changes to binary files.¶

Git checkouts fail with the following error when non-text files contain a specific byte sequence and are not explicitly defined as binary files: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by checkout. Please, commit your changes or stash them.

Workaround – Edit the following section of your .gitattributes file:

# Auto-detect text files, ensure they use LF.
*         text=auto eol=lf

and then make one of the following changes:

• Remove the line beginning with *
• Remove the eol=lf text
• Ensure that a specification line is added for every binary file extension used in your repository

Deployed branches or tags cannot be deleted.¶

Acquia Cloud does not allow you to delete branches currently deployed to an environment. If you try to delete a branch from the command line, an error message like the following displays:

remote: Operation rejected: remote: Git branch or tag test_branch cannot be
deleted because it is currently deployed to testsite.prod

Acquia Cloud displays an error message when pushing code to Git.¶

When attempting to push code, some users may encounter error messages like the following example if the root account owns a directory, instead of the siteuser account:

remote: error: insufficient permission for adding an object to repository
database ./objects

Contact Acquia support to correct the directory’s ownership settings.

Deployment keys must be associated with a user account.¶

Acquia Cloud does not support the use of deployment keys (machine keys) that are not associated with an individual user account. All SSH keys must be associated with a user account.

Workaround – Create a user account to associate the deploy key as described in Using deployment keys on Acquia Cloud.

Acquia Connector requests can time out.¶

Drupal websites connected to Acquia subscription, will send heartbeat requests during each cron run. By default, cron runs at the beginning of each hour, which can cause the Acquia subscription service to receive thousands of simultaneous connections across all subscriber websites, causing some requests to timeout.

Workaround – If your subscription service is experiencing timeouts, Acquia recommends you modify your cron runs to not begin at the start of the hour.

The Acquia Connector module conflicts with Remote stream wrapper module.¶

The Acquia Connector module has a conflict with the Remote stream wrapper module, which is listed on the Modules to use with caution on Acquia Cloud page.

Workaround – Apply this patch, available on Drupal.org.

You cannot use Drush to update your Drupal 8.4 or greater websites.¶

You must use Composer to build websites running Drupal versions 8.4 or later. Updating using Drush will no longer be possible.

Using vendored Drush may disable some Drush commands.¶

Including Drush in an Acquia Cloud application branch may create a conflict between the version installed in the vendor directory and the version installed in Acquia Cloud, disabling some Drush commands. Most notably, it disables Install distribution, which allows you to install a different version of Drupal into the deployed branch.

Workaround – Modify the existing branch by removing Drush from the branch you want to install a Drupal distribution into, or create a new branch without the Drush dependency.

Drush is generally found in one of the following directories:

• vendor/drush
• docroot/vendor/drush

You can use Composer to remove Drush by executing the following command:

composer remove drush/drush

See Vendored Drush known issue for additional details.

Drush 9 is incompatible with certain Acquia Drush commands.¶

The following Drush commands for use with Acquia Cloud require you to use Drush 8 instead of Drush 9:

• ah-db-backup – Drush command for creating a database backup from the command line.
• ah-db-import – Drush command for importing databases from the command line. For more information, see Downloading database backups from the command line or Importing your database.
• ah-site-archive-import – Drush command for importing a website archive file, as described in Importing an existing application using Drush.

Drush 9 supports only websites built with Composer.¶

Drush 9 requires your Drupal 8 website to be built with Composer, with Drush listed as a dependency.

Using Drush 9 may display error messages.¶

If you are using Drush 9 in an Acquia Cloud environment, Acquia Cloud may display the following errors, such as:

• Fatal error: require(): Failed opening required '/var/www/site-php//D8--[sitename]-settings.inc'
• Drush command terminated abnormally due to an unrecoverable error.

Workaround – To determine if this Drush 9-based behavior is affecting your use of the product, execute the following commands from a command prompt:

drush9 php-eval 'var_export($_ENV['AH_SITE_NAME'] , true);'
printenv 'AH_SITE_NAME'

These values must be equal. If they are not:

1. Edit your website’s settings.php file.
2. Before the Acquia require line, add $_SERVER['PWD']=DRUPAL_ROOT;.
3. Save the settings.php file.

Drush aliases are downloaded only for active on-demand environments.¶

Drush aliases for Acquia Cloud CD environments are downloaded only if the environment is active.

Do not install Drush in your home directory.¶

Installing Drush in your user directory can cause unexpected task failures. Acquia recommends you require a site-local Drush as part of your codebase, not your home directory, and run your commands with a specific major version of Drush, as described in Using Drush on Acquia Cloud.

Legacy alerts from New Relic fail with the removal of TLS 1.0.¶

Legacy alerts from New Relic fail with the removal of TLS 1.0 from Acquia systems. For help in updating your alerts, see: Transition from legacy alerting to New Relic Alerts and Availability monitoring (legacy).

Using Midnight Commander can cause gluster service interruptions.¶

Acquia Cloud Enterprise customers who use GNU Midnight Commander can experience service interruptions when trying to access their GFS mount. Acquia currently recommends that you do not use Midnight Commander with your Acquia-hosted websites.

Multi-region failover does not support multisites.¶

The Acquia Cloud multi-region failover service supports only a single database per environment.

Some Drupal modules are not supported on Acquia Cloud.¶

The design of the Acquia platform can sometimes cause incompatibilities with Drupal contributed modules. Drupal modules not supported on Acquia Cloud are listed in Modules and applications incompatible with Acquia Cloud. Other modules usable on Acquia Cloud with caution or special configuration are listed in Modules to use with caution on Acquia Cloud. For information about other software incompatible with Acquia Cloud, see Unsupported software.

You must rebuild caches after updating Drupal.¶

Customers upgrading their websites to newer versions of Drupal 8 must rebuild website caches after the upgrading. Unexpected errors and problems with some page displays may occur until you rebuild caches.

Running update.php on Drupal 8 can display error messages.¶

Attempting to run update.php on Drupal 8 will fail with the following error message:

In order to run update.php you need to either be logged in as admin or have
set $settings['update_free_access']

Workaround – Use one of the following methods:

• Run drush updb to complete database updates.

• Whenever you must run update.php, use your browser’s cookie manager to grab the session cookie from your current authenticated Drupal session, and then remove the leading S from the session name.

• If you are running updates on your Dev or Stage environments, temporarily disable HTTPS while running updates.

• Edit your settings.php file to temporarily set $settings['update_free_access'] to TRUE during your updates.

• ADVANCED – Add the following code to your update.php file (directly following the use statements) to force Drupal to acknowledge the X-Forwarded-Proto value when determining if the request must be treated as HTTPS:

  if (isset($_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO"]) &&
     $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO"] == "https") {
     $_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on';
     }
  

Altering the $databases array causes connection errors.¶

Websites altering the $databases array in settings.php to enable third-party database connections may experience connection errors when the connection setup is delayed in settings.php.

You cannot import a local website archive using the product interface.¶

The Acquia Cloud interface does not support importing a website archive from a local file using the UI. Instead, you can import a site archive from a URL or import using Drush.

All Twig cache files for an environment are stored in a single directory.¶

Clearing a website’s Twig caches clears the Twig caches for all websites hosted by that environment. For more information about how Acquia Cloud stores Twig caches, see Twig caches.

Resolution for Acquia Cloud Site Factory subscribers – Upgrade your installed version of the Acquia Cloud Site Factory Connector module to either version 8.x-1.59 or greater, or version 8.x-2.59 or greater (for Drush 9 support).

Drupal 8 websites can have theme change issues with Twig caches.¶

Drupal 8 applications on Acquia Cloud Enterprise can experience issues where cached Twig templates fall out of sync on different web server instances when changing themes and performing a code deployment. The problem arises from having separate copies of the compiled Twig templates on each web server instance and a related Drupal core issue.

Workaround – When you make changes to themes in Drupal 8 applications on Acquia Cloud Enterprise, connect to each web server instance, and then run a command like the following to remove the outdated Twig templates:

drush @[sitename].[prod] --uri=http://[site_URL]/ ev '\Drupal\Core\PhpStorage\PhpStorageFactory::get("twig")->deleteAll();'

The AuthUserFile directive in .htaccess is not supported.¶

The AuthUserFile directive in the Apache .htaccess file sets the name of a text file containing a list of users and passwords for user authentication. Acquia Cloud does not support AuthUserFile, since its value must be either an absolute path or a path relative to the server root, and won’t work across different Acquia Cloud environments.

The SymLinksIfOwnerMatch option in .htaccess is not supported.¶

Due to the configuration of directory ownership and permissions for your Acquia Cloud application’s codebase and files directories, use of the SymLinksIfOwnerMatch option in your application’s .htaccess file will prevent your web server from accessing any of the assets in your files directory. You must use the FollowSymLinks option instead.

Previous versions of Acquia Cloud used LOGNAME differently.¶

Do not use the LOGNAME environment variable to determine sitegroup or sitename in your .htaccess file or in other custom scripts.

Workaround – Use the AH_SITE_NAME, AH_SITE_GROUP, or AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT environment variables if you need environment-aware variables in your scripts.

The Acquia Cloud pipelines feature is incompatible with IP whitelisting.¶

The Acquia Cloud pipelines user interface uses a user authentication system incompatible with IP address whitelisting.

Workaround – Use the command-line interface instead.

You can connect the Acquia Cloud pipelines feature only to repositories owned by the current Bitbucket user.¶

The Bitbucket permissions model requires that the current user own the repository and all of the code being deployed. Users may be unable to add branches from external pull requests or experience other issues.

The Acquia Cloud pipelines feature is incompatible with Bitbucket Server.¶

The Acquia Cloud pipelines feature works only with Bitbucket Cloud, and not Bitbucket Server.

The Bitbucket API has known issues with forks.¶

The API for Bitbucket does not allow you to pull in the branch from a fork inside a pull request.

The Bitbucket API only allows collaborators to see branches.¶

You must add a user as a collaborator to your fork to see the user’s branches.

Using webhooks on Acquia Git repository triggers infinite loops.¶

Webhooks to trigger pipelines jobs are disabled on Git repositories hosted by Acquia. Connected repositories hosted on Github and Bitbucket are unaffected.

Workaround – To execute pipelines jobs on an Acquia-hosted Git repository, use the pipelines start command or the Acquia Cloud user interface. For more information, see Managing your pipelines in the Acquia Cloud interface.