MT / Perl error: "can't call prepare on ..."

Can anyone offer some insight on this error:

Can't call method "prepare" on an undefined value at 
lib/MT/ObjectDriver/DBI.pm line 103. at lib/MT.pm line 867

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Got an error: 
Can't call method "prepare" on an undefined value at 
lib/MT/ObjectDriver/DBI.pm line 103. at lib/MT/App/CMS.pm line 906

I've been getting it since I upgraded to MT version 3.32; Googling doesn't find much.

It happens when I save an entry after adding or editing it, but not when I preview those changes. I believe it's part of the page-rebuilding process (though simply rebuilding files doesn't trigger it either).

I can't comment out the offending part of the code (below) without creating other errors:

    my($tbl, $sql, $bind) =
        $driver->_prepare_from_where($class, $terms, $args);
    my(%rec, @bind, @cols);
    my $cols = $class->column_names;
    for my $col (@$cols) {
        push @cols, $col;
        push @bind, $rec{$col};
    }
    my $tmp = "select ";
    $tmp .= "distinct " if $args->{join} && $args->{join}[3]{unique};
    $tmp .= join(', ', map "${tbl}_$_", @cols) . "n";
    $sql = $tmp . $sql;
    my $dbh = $driver->{dbh};
    warn "load - Preparing SQL: $sql" if $MT::DebugMode & 4;

    my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql)
        or return $driver->error(MT->translate("Loading data failed with SQL error [_1]", $dbh->errstr));

I'm no Perl guru, but it seems to me that $sql should be defined in the first line of the code snippet.

I ran mt-check and got the all-clear. I ran mt-upgrade and it did what it needed to (doing so subsequently confirms that the database schema is OK). I'm pretty much stumped at this point.

In reply to:
Can't call method "prepare" on an undefined value at

It doesn't have to do with the argument to the prepare() method.

A method is called based on an an object reference or class name. So the variable must be a reference or a non-empty string. The error here is that $dbh is undefined in the call $dbh->prepare().

And of course its not obvious why $driver->{dbh} is returning a null value. Is it possible the database connection is not being made? Or maybe it is a bug.

cool Atropos | openvein.org

This is helpful -- I really appreciate it.

I will take another look at the code, put in some debugging statements, and see what happens.

I'll let you know what I find.

MT / Perl error: "can't call prepare on ..."