There are times when  you cannot access the Magneto site admin in order to disable the compiler e.g. because of errors when trying to get to admin. Therefore sometimes you’ll need to know how to disable the Magento compiler without admin access.

You’ll need shell access to do this, and then issue the following shell commands:

$ cd shell
$ php compiler.php disable

You can use this shell command to enable the Magento compiler again:

$ php compiler.php compile

You can check the status of the Magento compiler using the following command:

$php compiler.php state