Magento – SQL install script doesn’t run when caches are turned on

OBSERVER: auto_add_on_coupon_insertion 4.7411 2 2,388,872 3,145,728

seems to be a big contributor. Default Magento 1.8 does not have such an event observer. As a first step I would suggest going through any installed custom extension to see if disabling it solves the slowness.

After hours of fiddling and searching, I found the magic sauce in a comment thread on this SO post. I had to expand the comments to find it!

For posterity and in case you're banging your head on the same thing, here's the solution.

Check your logs (tail -f <magento_root>/var/log/system.log).

If you have copied any XML from the web, view it in a text editor and ensure that you do not have invisible characters!

Does not work:

<config>
    <menu>
        <namespace module="namespace_package">
            <title>Namespace</title>
            <sort_order>200</sort_order>
                <children>
                    <overview>
                    <title>Overview</title>
                    <sort_order>1</sort_order>
                    <action>adminhtml/namespace/index</action>
                </overview>
            </children>
        </namespace>
    </menu>
    <acl>
     <resources>
        <admin>
            <children>
                <namespace module="namespace_package">
                    <title>Top Level Namespace Menu Item</title>
                    <sort_order>1</sort_order>
                </namespace>
                </children>
            </admin>
        </resources>
    </acl>
</config>

Solution: make sure your module defined for the <config><menu> in adminhtml.xml is correctly using ONLY the namespace and not Namespace_Package or namespace_package.

This works:

<config>
    <menu>
        <namespace module="namespace">
            <title>Namespace</title>
            <sort_order>200</sort_order>
                <children>
                    <overview>
                    <title>Overview</title>
                    <sort_order>1</sort_order>
                    <action>adminhtml/namespace/index</action>
                </overview>
            </children>
        </namespace>
    </menu>
    <acl>
     <resources>
        <admin>
            <children>
                <namespace module="namespace">
                    <title>Top Level Namespace Menu Item</title>
                    <sort_order>1</sort_order>
                </namespace>
                </children>
            </admin>
        </resources>
    </acl>
</config>