finding out what is causing dreaded "The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later." message

Question

while doing a drupal 6 to 7 upgrade I am getting the not so helpful message "The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later." everytime I go to certain pages. ex) /admin/config

What is the best way to find out what is causing the fatal error so that I can fix it?

All I can think of right now is to start disabling contributed modules until that page works or looking through the logs.

Thanks.

Answer 1

If dlog/watchdog and php error log aren't working, try this:

go on /includes/error.inc comment line line 245

print theme('maintenance_page', array('content' => t('The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later.')));

and put this

print theme('maintenance_page', array('content' => t('The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later.'.$fatal.' '.var_export($error,true))));

Very similar, you put var_export($error,true)) at end of error

Answer 2

By clearing the logs at /admin/reports/dblog then reloading the broken page I easily could identify the offending module when I rechecked the log.

Site is working fine now : )