Drupal Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How should I name my make files?

In order for Platform to automatically detect your make file, you need to call it project.make.

You can also have a specific make file for Drupal core called project-core.make

When I push changes to a make file, does Platform.sh run the update?

After a push, Platform.sh will rebuild your environment and download all the modules that are in your make file.

If an update function (hook_update) needs to run, you'll have to manually trigger it by going to /update.php or use the deployment hooks to automatically run the updates.

How can I override the default robots.txt?

If your project is using a make file, you will end up with the default robots.txt provided by Drupal.

On your Development environments, Platform.sh automatically overrides your robots.txt file with:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

You can customize the robots.txt by placing your own version at the root of your repository.

To override the behavior of robots.txt for Development environments you would currently need to use the API, contact our support for details.

I'm getting a PDO Exception 'MySQL server has gone away'

Normally, this means there is a problem with the MySQL server container and you may need to increase the storage available to MySQL to resolve the issue. Ballooning MySQL storage can be caused by a number of items:

1) A large number of watchdog entries being captured. Fix the errors being generated or disable database logging. 2) Cron should run at regular intervals to ensure cache tables get cleared out. 3) If you're using Drupal Commerce Core < 1.10, you may have an extremely large cache_form table. Upgrade to Commerce Core 1.10 to resolve.

Why do I get "MySQL cannot connect to the database server"?

If you are having a problem connecting to the database server, you will need force a re-deployment of the database container. To do so, you can edit the service definition to add or remove a small amount of storage and then push.

Can I use the name of the session cookie for caching?

For Drupal sites, the name of the session cookie is based on a hash of the domain name. This means that it will actually be consistent for a specific website and can safely be used as a fixed value.