Acquia CMS

Security update process common errors

The following list includes errors commonly seen during RA environment security updates, with possible solutions.

  • Error: Drush, All pending updates failed on RA for prod:siteName

  • Error: Unable to run drush #.#.# pm-updatestatus/pm:security on any Production multisite for prod:siteName, exiting.

    • Default multisite not working

      • Configure the default multisite with a working settings.php file with a correct database include statement. See Configuring your application to use environment databases.

      • Point requests for default at a working multisite in the sites.php file, using sites.php to specify an alternate settings.php file.

    • Drush symlink is missing from vendor/bin - Ensure vendor/bin/drush is committed to a branch and deployed.

    • An alternate .drushrc file was detected. - Remove it from the codebase and add it to your .gitignore file.

    • See Known issues with Drush for Drush specific solutions.

    • The website runs the current Drupal version, but is not Composer-based.

  • Error: Error performing task 16811 : StageDeploy with error message Staging failed because at least one site failed to stage during the process.

    • A previously staged website is no longer valid.

      • Give the RA team with a list of 5 to 10 domains for websites which should be staged in the RA environments.

  • Error: Unable to run drush As this is a Drupal multi-site build, and you haven't specified a [status] pm-updatestatus/pm:security on any Production multisite for prod:siteName, exiting.

    • This error is related to the Domain Access module.

      • Give the RA team a list of 5 to 10 domains for websites to include in the update process.

      • Add domain aliases to your primary domain configuration on production that includes all non-production domains.

  • Error: Unable to run drush [warning] "continue" targeting switch is equivalent to "break". Did you mean to use "continue"? file.module:898 pm-updatestatus/pm:security on any Production multisite for  prod:siteName, exiting.

    • This error indicates an outdated Drupal core running on PHP 7.3.

      • Update Drupal core.

Troubleshooting for failed updates on Composer-based websites

View the Composer log file attached to the ticket, search for the first occurrence of Error Output to find details of what caused the automated update process to fail.

Acquia recommends that your development team fixes the root cause of the error and closes the associated ticket. This ensures that the automated process for security updates can attempt to update the website in the next weekly run.

The following table documents the probable root causes for different error messages that you may encounter in the Composer log file, and serves as a starting point for fixing the errors.

Error messages in log file

Probable root cause of the error

Your requirements could not be resolved to an installable set of packages.

Only root package requirements can receive temporary constraints

composer-drupal-optimizations is not required in your composer.json and has not been removed

Only root package requirements can receive temporary constraints

Your composer.json file is invalid

Composer had issues with the require section versioning.

should be avoided if the package follows semantic versioning

core : exact version constraints

A dependency pinned to a specific version in the composer.json file prevented updates from getting completed.

These conflict with your requirements or minimum-stability

The following exception is caused by a lack of memory or swap, or not having swap configured

A Composer-dependency conflict prevented updates from getting completed.

Uncaught Error: Call to undefined

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare

Fatal error: Declaration of

Fatal error: Uncaught ArgumentCountError

fatal: Could not read from remote repository

Composer configuration is not valid

Failed to execute git clone

option does not exist

Fatal error: require()

proc_open(): fork failed - Cannot allocate memory

failed to open stream: No such file or directory

Fatal error: Uncaught Error

The system encountered a PHP error while attempting to perform updates.

The process has been signaled with signal

Allowed memory size of

The system attempted Composer updates with Composer 1.x, and PHP ran out of memory.

Unable to remove deprecated Composer package

composer-drupal-optimizations is not required in your composer.json and has not been removed

The update process attempted to remove a deprecated package but failed.

plugin was skipped because it requires a Plugin API version

Composer updates could not be applied because of a dependency in the site that required Composer 2.x. Other dependencies were only compatible with Composer 1.x.

Failed to execute git clone

Unable to checkout git branch

A private Git repository specified in the composer.json file prevented Composer updates from getting completed.

.git directory is missing

During the Composer update process, the system prompted the user to reinstall a copy of a dependency due to a missing .git directory. The automated update process could not respond yes to the prompt, and exited.

  • Remove the particular package from the vendor directory as mentioned in the composer_error log file attached with the ticket.

  • Be careful while removing the package directory as some packages such as simplesamlphp/simplesamlphp may write to the vendor directory, and your changes may be lost. For more information, refer to the package documentation.

  • Run composer install on root to regenerate this package directory.

Cannot apply patch

Composer attempted to apply patches as specified in the composer.json file but failed.