Question Uncaught Exception: Another menu item has the same alias in Root. New J! 1.6 installations

I am trying to install this product on my PC running win 7 , xamp.
I tried to install it from the URl and things go well until the process "Installing Sample data" or the process that follows that


Uncaught Exception: Another menu item has the same alias in Root. Root is the top level parent

Unsure how to sort this? I am new to Joomla so any help is greatly appreciated.

MB - TinyB

hello,

This topic should help you : www.kunena.org/forum/173-k-16-installati...-the-top-level-paren

Thank you, tinyb, for your report.

The key words in your report are "Installing Sample data". When I discussed this issue with another user, that's the same information that he gave me, too.

I have not had time to test this. In fact, most of us who have built dozens of hundreds of Joomla websites, when we build a new Joomla site we do not install the sample Joomla data. This seems to have been something we may have overlooked when we conducted our own tests.

The experiment that needs to be conducted is what happens if you create a new J! 1.6.3 site, install the sample Joomla data, and then try to install K 1.6.4 immediately after that? Do you get the error message (during the Kunena installation) "Uncaught Exception: Another menu item has the same alias in Root. Root is the top level parent".

Has anyone conducted this experiment?

sozzled wrote: The experiment that needs to be conducted is what happens if you create a new J! 1.6.3 site, install the sample Joomla data, and then try to install K 1.6.4 immediately after that? Do you get the error message (during the Kunena installation) "Uncaught Exception: Another menu item has the same alias in Root. Root is the top level parent".

Has anyone conducted this experiment?

Works fine for me. I think the OP just has an existing menu item that conflicts with his installation.

Thank you, GoremanX. That dispels the belief that "I installed J! 1.6.3 with sample Joomla data loaded and, before doing anything else, I got this error message when I tried to install K 1.6.4".

What can happen, though, is that people install J! 1.6.0, J! 1.6.1 or J! 1.6.2 (with or without sample data), they try to install some version of Kunena and something wemt pear-shaped. So they later try to install K 1.6.4 (possibly making several attempts) and it doesn't install because there's a corruption to the Joomla database left behind by a partially incomplete Kunena installation because they were using an earlier version of Joomla ... and then they contact us. That kind of thing can, and does, happen.

I seem to have the same problem when trying a fresh install of Kunena 1.6.

Prepare Installation ... OK
Create kunena_version ... OK
Uncompressing com_kunena-admin.zip ... OK
Uncompressing com_kunena-site.zip ... OK
Uncompressing com_kunena-media.zip ... OK
Installing language English (United Kingdom) ... OK
Installing System - Kunena plug-in ... OK
Create kunena_announcement ... OK
Create kunena_attachments ... OK
Create kunena_categories ... OK
Create kunena_config ... OK
Create kunena_favorites ... OK
Create kunena_groups ... OK
Create kunena_messages ... OK
Create kunena_messages_text ... OK
Create kunena_moderation ... OK
Create kunena_polls ... OK
Create kunena_polls_options ... OK
Create kunena_polls_users ... OK
Create kunena_ranks ... OK
Create kunena_sessions ... OK
Create kunena_smileys ... OK
Create kunena_subscriptions ... OK
Create kunena_subscriptions_categories ... OK
Create kunena_thankyou ... OK
Create kunena_users ... OK
Create kunena_users_banned ... OK
Create kunena_whoisonline ... OK
Install Sample Data ... OK
... FAILED Uncaught Exception: Another menu item has the same alias in Root. Root is the top level parent

I have installed Joomla 1.6 (without sample data) & Community Builder 1.4 (with sample field data).

Kunena Forum shows up under Administration/Components with following options:
Configuration/Category Manager/User Manager/Template Manager/Rank Manager/Trash Manager.

When selecting one of these options following message appears:

Installer detected failed or interrupted installation attempt!
An incomplete installation of Kunena 1.6.4 build 4832 was found in your system. This means that the installation either failed or was interrupted.

Also the green "Install Kunena 1.6" buttom appears, when I hit it to try installing again same problem occurs.

I'm kinda stuck, I found a few topics on the forum describing this error but no solution.
Any help would be highly appreciated!

regards,
Eef

Thanks, Eef, and welcome to Kunena.

We started this topic because there are a few people who get this "another menu item has same alias in root" message when they're trying to install Kunena. Someone came up with the idea that this error message arises because people are have a totally "fresh Joomla 1.6" website but one that they loaded sample data into. What we have established, however, is that the error message is not dependent on whether the sample Joomla data was loaded or not loaded. That was the point of this topic and, now that we've dealt with that suspected cause, the discussion about that issue should be over.

However, for other people trying to install Kunena, there will be occasions when they get "another menu has same alias in root" when they're trying to install Kunena on a "fresh version of Joomla" and we need to identify what we mean by J! 1.6 and what is a "fresh version"

Joomla 1.6 means J! 1.6.3. It does not mean J! 1.6.0 or J! 1.6.1 or J! 1.6.2. It means J! 1.6.3. So let's be totally clear on that point.

A fresh install of Joomla means a threadbare, vanilla-flavoured, nothing-else-added-to-it installation of J! 1.6.3. So let's also get that point crystal-clear, too.

Many people claim that they are using a "fresh install of Joomla" when they mean that they've installed J! 1.6.0 plus Community Builder 1.4 plus Brand-X template plus 5 other Joomla extensions and then they've tried to install K 1.6.4. Other people claim that they encountered the error after an unsuccessful earlier attempt to install K 1.6.4 in their "fresh version of Joomla" (but we don't know why the earlier attempt was unsuccessful).

So we really don't know too much about the circumstances that cause this "another menu item has same alias in root" error message to appear.

But the news is very encouraging. If your site really is a "fresh install of Joomla" then it takes less time to remove the site, drop the database tables, re-install J! 1.6.3 and K 1.6.4 than it takes to wait for an answer as to what could possibly be the problem.

The reason that people get "another menu item has same alias in root" is because there is another menu item that has the alias "forum" in your menu ... somewhere. What put it there? I don't know. Unfortunately, J! 1.6 is very fussy with the menu and this is probably something the Kunena development team need to look into. Why do J! 1.6 database tables become corrupted? We don't know the answer to that question, either.

How do you fix it? One solution is to work your way through Joomla's Menu Manager and root out any menus that have the alias "forum" in them. The other solution lies in delving into the Joomla database tables (jos_extensions and jos_menus) but I'm not going into those details here.