Forum Errors all of a sudden

[Jump1979man]

I have quite a few sites and today this error shows up on all of them.....


Notice: Undefined variable: boarddir in /home/osb79/public_html/forum/index.php on line 57

Notice: Undefined variable: sourcedir in /home/osb79/public_html/forum/index.php on line 61

Warning: require_once(/QueryString.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/osb79/public_html/forum/index.php on line 61

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/QueryString.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/osb79/public_html/forum/index.php on line 61


I am currently dealing with Monte Carlo Hosting and they are telling me their servers are fine.....What could cause this to just spontaneously occur to all my sites at once?  I am thinking its one of their database servers causing this problem.  In fact unless it was a hacker attacking all of my sites (like 4 of them) which would be pretty coincidental, it has to be on their end. 

[Jump1979man]

This is what they are telling me...

You need to go into the site, and copy the content of "Settings_bak.php" and put it into "Settings.php"

I never went into the backend to do anything let alone remove that file......

This is a bunch of garbage!

[Jump1979man]

This is the response from Monte Carlo Hosting.....

Seems this is an SMF issue and not a hosting issue....SMF, if this is true you really need to correct this.  What happens for people that arent as good at fixing these issues as others.  Let alone me now, I have to take the time to fix this on 4 sites.

What happens is when our drive filled up, and apparently your SMF forums updated - when this happens, there's no room to rewrite the file, so it blanks it.


SMF is the only software that opens files in the "rwx" mode, which means it opens, reads to memory, then clears the file - then after rewrites it.... All other software opens in append mode and thus doesn't cause this.



We found the cause of the drive getting full - it was a client who was running a custom made script that put a massive amount of data into /tmp/.

[Illori]

and does the first quote not work? that should be the solution to this problem and that has worked for others several times before.

[MrPhil]

Tragically, SMF has a severe bug that the developers refuse to even consider dealing with. Whenever there is a database error, the Settings.php file gets rewritten (stupid move, SMF!). Under certain conditions, this will result in the Settings.php file being emptied out (0 size) and you experience the error messages you listed. You have to COPY Settings_bak.php over the empty Settings.php file to get things going again. NEVER NEVER NEVER rename one to the other.

My sig > Fixes discusses how to fix this in SMF 1.1. Evidently the same fix is needed for SMF 2.