Debugging Poweradmin

To help diagnose issues, you can enable various debug settings in your Poweradmin configuration. Below are the available debug settings and how to enable them.

Configuration Location

Debugging settings should be added to your config/settings.php file. The legacy inc/config.inc.php format and its migration script were removed in 4.1.0, so config/settings.php is the only configuration file on current releases.

Available Debug Settings

1. PHP Error Reporting

To display PHP errors directly in the browser, add the following lines to your index.php or any other entry point file:

ini_set('display_errors', 1);
ini_set('display_startup_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

2. Logger Settings

Configure the logging settings in your config/settings.php:

return [
    // Other settings...

    'logging' => [
        'type' => 'native',    // Options: 'null', 'native'
        'level' => 'debug',    // Options: 'debug', 'info', 'notice', 'warning', 'error', 'critical', 'alert', 'emergency'
        // Other logging settings...
    ],

    // Other settings...
];

These settings are primarily used for logging authentication issues and other system events.

3. Database Debugging

Enable or disable database debugging to log detailed database operations and errors:

return [
    // Other settings...

    'database' => [
        // Other database settings...
        'debug' => true,    // Show all SQL queries
    ],

    // Other settings...
];

4. Show Errors in the Interface

misc.display_errors (default false) makes error pages and PowerDNS API and DNSSEC errors carry the upstream detail, and turns on strict Twig templates. Use it for troubleshooting only and turn it off again in production:

return [
    // Other settings...

    'misc' => [
        'display_errors' => true,
    ],

    // Other settings...
];

5. LDAP Debugging

Enable or disable LDAP debugging to log detailed LDAP operations and errors:

return [
    // Other settings...

    'ldap' => [
        // Other LDAP settings...
        'debug' => true,    // Enable LDAP debug logging
    ],

    // Other settings...
];

Display Statistics

To see memory usage and execution time at the bottom of each page, enable the display_stats option:

return [
    // Other settings...

    'misc' => [
        // Other miscellaneous settings...
        'display_stats' => true,    // Display memory usage and execution time
    ],

    // Other settings...
];

By enabling these settings, you can gain more insight into the application's behavior and troubleshoot issues more effectively.

Common Configuration Issues

Password Character Issues

Installers before 4.5.0 wrote a broken config/settings.php when a database, LDAP or SMTP password contained a single quote (') or a backslash (\). From 4.5.0 the web installer escapes both.

Symptoms (older installers, or a hand-written settings.php):

• Installation fails with PHP parse errors
• Configuration file cannot be parsed
• "Access denied for user" errors after successful installation test

Example Error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'password' in config/settings.php on line 42

Solution:

• In a hand-written settings.php, write \' for a single quote and \\ for a backslash inside single-quoted strings. Double quotes need no escaping there.
• On an installer older than 4.5.0, avoid single quotes, backslashes and line breaks in these passwords, or fix the generated file by hand.
• Use var_dump(ConfigurationManager::getInstance()->getAll()) to inspect parsed configuration values.

PowerDNS Answers REFUSED for Public Names

Names inside your zones resolve, but dig @your-server example.com or any other public name returns REFUSED. This is how PowerDNS Authoritative Server works: it answers only for the zones it holds and never recurses. No Poweradmin setting changes that, and neither do secondary zones or supermasters; a secondary zone transfers one zone in, and a supermaster only auto-creates secondary zones when a listed primary sends a NOTIFY.

If clients need both your zones and the public internet, run a resolver in front (PowerDNS Recursor, Unbound, BIND), point the clients at it, and forward only your own zones to the authoritative server. The old recursor= option in pdns.conf was removed in PowerDNS Authoritative 4.1.