Known issues in Acquia Dev Desktop¶

Acquia Dev Desktop doesn’t support usernames that include non-ASCII characters¶

Workaround: Use a Windows account with a username including only ASCII characters.

Windows file paths must be less than 260 characters¶

The path of a file can’t be longer than the Windows maximum path length of 260 characters, which you can exceed when trying to clone a Cloud Platform application, or pulling files or code from Cloud Platform.

Workaround: Either install Acquia Dev Desktop and the websites directory into a shorter Windows path (for example, C:\dd or C:\sites, rather than C:\Program Files\Dev Desktop\...) or consider renaming long custom file or path names in your Cloud Platform application.

Elevated permissions required for Microsoft Windows¶

Acquia Dev Desktop requires elevated permissions for both installation and operation on computers running Microsoft Windows.

Apache server fails to start on Windows 8 and 10¶

Some Microsoft Windows version 8 and version 10 users have reported Acquia Dev Desktop fails to stop and restart Apache correctly during the website installation process, which prevents installation from completing successfully.

Workaround: While Acquia corrects this issue, use one of the following two potential methods:

• On the Acquia Dev Desktop menu, click Preference, click the Config tab, and then click the Edit link next to the Apache field to open the httpd.conf file in Notepad. Close the file without making changes, which may allow you to create a new website.
• Before starting or restarting the application stack in Acquia Dev Desktop, use the Task Manager to end the Apache process manually.

Cloning fails for website names longer than 21 characters¶

Acquia Dev Desktop can’t make a local clone of a Cloud Platform application if the application’s name is longer than 21 characters.

Workaround: Export your application from Cloud Platform, and then import it as a new application using a name 21 characters or less in length. You can then make a local clone of the new application in Acquia Dev Desktop.

Acquia Dev Desktop may fail to regenerate correct symlink¶

Acquia Dev Desktop doesn’t regenerate the correct symlink to the file system if a previously-generated symlink to the file system is checked into a subscriber’s codebase.

Workaround: Remove the symlink from Acquia Dev Desktop, and then deploy code without it. Acquia Dev Desktop should then regenerate the correct symlink.

Importing a database with large cache tables causes MySQL errors¶

Users attempting to import a database with large cache tables will receive the following error message:

MySQL import failed. STDERR:ERROR 1064 (42000) at line XXXX: You have an
error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL
server version for the right syntax to use near 'XXX'

Workaround: Search for the table in the database that is large enough to cause an issue and complete the following steps:

1. SSH in to your Cloud Platform subscripton.

2. Run drush sqlc to access the MySQL prompt.

3. At the prompt, enter truncate_[TABLE_NAME]; to truncate the table, where [TABLE_NAME] is the name of the table you want to truncate.

4. Try to import your website to Acquia Dev Desktop again.

   After truncating the large table, Dev Desktop should synchronize the database.

Acquia Dev Desktop doesn’t support syncing with Site Factory¶

The Acquia Dev Desktop Host on Acquia Cloud or Clone from Acquia Cloud buttons work with Cloud Platform applications only, and not with Site Factory applications.

Site Factory overwrites information in settings.php¶

The acsf-init command in Site Factory removes lines in settings.php inserted by Acquia Dev Desktop.

Workaround: Remove Acquia Dev Desktop changes to your settings.php file with git stash before executing the acsf-init command, unstashing the changes afterward.

Acquia Dev Desktop can’t deploy the directories outside of the docroot¶

Sites built using Composer, with the vendor directory above the docroot, can’t be deploy to Acquia Cloud through Dev Desktop, since Dev Desktop can’t deploy any directories outside of the docroot. You will receive an error message if you try to deploy a Composer-based site.

Acquia Dev Desktop doesn’t support Drupal 9 sites¶

You can’t create or manage Drupal 9 sites by Dev Desktop. You will receive an error message if you try to create a Drupal 9 site in Dev Desktop.

Acquia Dev Desktop isn’t compatible with Acquia Cloud Next¶

Dev Desktop isn’t compatible with Acquia Cloud Next. You will receive an error message if you try to push a site to Acquia Cloud Next environments.

Acquia Dev Desktop times out during stack start¶

You may receive a timeout error (for example, Process 'MySQL database server' failed to start) while starting Acquia Dev Desktop if you have unusually large, or many databases. If this error happens, try increasing the startTimeout, as described in Timeout during stack start, or view this Acquia Knowledge Base article.

Domain Access module requires special configuration¶

To use the Domain Access module with Acquia Dev Desktop, you must add a ServerAlias entry in the Acquia Dev Desktop Apache vhosts.conf configuration file. For details, see Using Domain Access with Acquia Dev Desktop.

Syncing fails for websites with too many files, or too large files¶

Applications hosted by Cloud Platform may not be able to sync locally if they have too many files in one directory, or extremely large files. For information about addressing files issues, see Understanding files, Proactively organizing files in subfolders, and Optimizing file paths: Organizing files in subfolders.

Acquia Dev Desktop fails to connect to Cloud Platform from behind a firewall¶

Some users may experience connection issues or other seemingly unrelated errors when attempting to sync their Cloud Platform applications locally or report bugs. These issues may be due to firewalls between your local computer and Cloud Platform.

Workaround: Acquia recommends you allowlist *.acquia.com/ in your firewall.

Trusted Host Settings not enabled¶

Some Drupal websites show a Trusted Host Settings Not enabled message. See Protecting against HTTP HOST Header attacks (prevent your site from thinking it’s someone else) for suggestions.

Drupal 8 installation displays a fatal error¶

When attempting to install Drupal 8, the installation process displays the following fatal error:

'The service definition "renderer" does not exist.'

Workaround: Don’t supply a password when prompted for database credentials. For information about a Drupal core patch to help avoid this issue, see Exception during installation when auto creating the MySQL database with special characters on Drupal.org.

Importing utf8mb4 databases on Dev Desktop fails¶

When attempting to import a utf8mb4 database, Acquia Dev Desktop displays the following message:

MySQL import failed.
STDERR:ERROR 1071 (42000) at line 12886: Specified key was too long; max key length is 767 bytes

Workaround: To import a utf8mb4 database on Acquia Dev Desktop, edit the my.cnf file, as displayed in the following example:

innodb_file_per_table=1
innodb_file_format=barracuda
innodb_large_prefix=1
init_connect='SET collation_connection = utf8mb4_unicode_ci'
init_connect='SET NAMES utf8mb4'
character-set-server=utf8mb4
collation-server=utf8mb4_unicode_ci

You can edit the my.cnf file by completing the following steps:

1. In Acquia Dev Desktop, go to Acquia Dev Desktop > Preferences.
2. Click the Config tab.
3. In the Stack configuration files section, find the MySQL field (which contains the path to the my.cnf file) and then click its Edit link to edit the my.cnf file.

Acquia Dev Desktop doesn’t support special characters for Application name¶

Acquia Dev Desktop throws JSON parser failed error when special characters are included in the Application name or Organization name.