CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Make sure the new civicrm.settings.php file was the correct required values (especially civicrm_root) and is in the right place. You can verify that it is being read by deliberately creating a syntax error and reloading your page.

Then delete the existing DB config settings by running this query:

UPDATE civicrm_domain set config_backend = '' WHERE id = 1;

( this assumes you are running CiviCRM using the default domain of 1 - modify if you're not ).
 

i would call this thread a godsend, but i don't think god had anything to do with it.  it's more of a dave greenberg-send.  i don't know if this issue persists across versions other than 1.6 and 1.7 (i fixed my problem on a drupal 4.7 and civicrm 1.6 implementation), but if it does a huge button in the settings page that says 'reset cached root directory' would be nice.

i spent countless hours trying to find out what the hell was going on (more like 5).  just out of curiosity, what exactly is the logic behind defining $civicrm_root if it's superseded by a value in the database?

The config_backend column in civicrm_domain stores the bulk of the settings for that install / domain in a serialized form. For new installs, the code takes the civicrm_root value from the settings file (civicrm.settings.php) - and then makes best guesses about the other values we need - which it stores in that column in the DB.

When a site is "moved" - the stored values for things like base and resource URL are no longer valid. The quickest fix (as noted in this and other threads) is to manually set config_backend to NULL. This causes it to be populated with new (hopefully valid) values. HTH.