View/Delete members fails (YaBBSE -> SMF 1.0 RC2 upgrade)

[smsforum]

Folks,
   I updated the second forum of mine today from YabbSE final to SMF 1.0 RC2.. everything is working perfectly except that in the admin screen if I click on the view/Delete members option, I get a server configuration error from apache.

The excerpt from the apache log says..
[Sat Nov 13 12:27:44 2004] [error] [client hxxp:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx [nonactive]] Premature end of script headers: /home/xxx/public_html/smf/index.php

I've got another forum that went the SMF route many months ago and subsequently got upgraded to RC2.. it had no issues like and I've spent several hours checking file/directory permissions on each to see if I can spot the issue. Both are hosted by the same provider, Blue Virtual. I've also used rsync in no-op mode to compare both filesets to see the differences.. onyl obvious differences where the theme and templates.. all source files are matched and present in both.

The problem forum has a hugh number of subscribed members.. 2866 in total.

Can anyone suggest what may be the cause here?

[[Unknown]]

If you go to Features and Options, and disable hostname lookups, does it change anything?

-[Unknown]

[smsforum]

just tried that now.. still same behaviour

[[Unknown]]

Well, View/Delete Members is paginated, so it shouldn't matter how many members you have.

I assume your server is in CGI mode, but that shouldn't matter.  Strange.  Does it do nothing "immediately", or does it sit for a while, as if loading, and then die?

-[Unknown]

[smsforum]

about 1-2 seconds.. not unlike typical delays when clicking on working features.

It has the hallmark of what the server will do if a directory or php file does not have the right permissions.. but usually in those cases, ther error.log tells all and thats not happening.

puzzled!.. thanks for the help in any event and pray do post any other ideas that come to mind.. I'm hoping someone else will emerge witht he same issue and help isolate the cause.

[[Unknown]]

Is it possible it's timing out?

Do you regularly get delays, then?  With which features, do you mean?  Or just all of them?

One way to isolate it might be to track the problem.  Typically, this is done by flagging major steps of execution (for example, every time a function is called, etc... to see when it dies.)  To do this, however, I'm afraid I would need three things - admin access, FTP access, and the time to do it.  If you want to provide the first two, I can try to work on the last one.

-[Unknown]

[smsforum]

I never get delays.. even searches through all posts are very quick.

I'm slow to assume its a timeout if the error reported in the log was "Premature end of script headers: /home/xxx/public_html/smf/index.php"

My own assumption is that the script bombs out very early over something either in file permissions or file content.

I took a look at the scripts.. (all .php files both in and above the Sources directory).. I had done an upgrade.. so there was garbage left in the sources dir..
Sources/gpl.txt
Sources/dump_database.php
Sources/UserLanguage.php
Sources/SplitThreads.php
Sources/ReportToModerator.php
Sources/RemoveThread.php
Sources/RemoveOldThreads.php
Sources/Post.php~
Sources/Packer.php
Sources/MoveThread.php
Sources/ModifyMessage.php
Sources/MergeThreads.php
Sources/ManageCats.php
Sources/Maintenance.php
Sources/LockThread.php
Sources/ICQPager.php

I built the above list by comparing the directory contents with those of the normal install tar ball.. could easily see which were old YaBBSE files.. and removed them.

I also found several of the files I had to be in DOS format.. so I took a tar of the source files form the fresh install and replaced the ones on site with these.. however several still had DOS format and most if not all had no terminating eoln.. I've often seen this to not cause problems with PHP.. but to be sure I used vim to over-ride the fileformat and re-save to write the missing eoln on each...  still no difference.

bummer!

Thanks for the offer of looking at the server.. unfortunately the site is live and I wouldn't be allowed open access to the outside. I'll survive without this for now.. it is the only feature that is not working for me.. I'll continue in the background to look into this and ask the webhost to help regarding why the problem occurs.. I'll probably try some php.ini stuff to see if I can get PHP to throw some light on the topic.

I'll post back any results I find

[smsforum]

Found that the max members per page was set to 5000.. which seemed really high.. reduced to 500 and it worked fine!

thanks again for the time

[Grudge]

Found that the max members per page was set to 5000.. which seemed really high.. reduced to 500 and it worked fine!

Jebus - that would explain it