Codeigniter无法加载数据库

I have a set of databases that loaded fine yesterday. Today the site has started spewing php 500 errors whenever a database is called. It seems that codeigniter is failing to initiate the databases.php config file. I can connect to the database manually in mysqli_connect with the same info but it fails in codeigniter. How can I find the break point where the site is failing? Help is greatly appreciated, I'm 10 hours in and would really need some sleep.