Forum not loading/white blank page

[JKC]

Hey, all--

My forum keeps showing up as a blank page, and nothing loads. There's nothing in the error log. It was working when I went to sleep, but no longer. ):

(Edit: This showed up later:

Code Select Expand

2014-10-04 09:23:08.443 [INFO] [...File not found [.../atlas/503.shtml]

I had this happen before on a different forum, but it was an inactive/un-updated forum, and a couple of you said that it was a problem that was fixed with 2.0.7 and 2.0.8.

This particular forum is updated (2.0.9). It's actually brand new and the only mod I installed so far was SimplePortal. Clearing the cache fixes it temporarily (tried it yesterday when this happened), but then half a day later it's back to being a blank page.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

(I did try to do a forum search, but the most relevant post I found was the one I made a few months ago. :p)

[Arantor]

Version of PHP?

[JKC]

PHP version    5.3.10

I've been using SMF for a while but never had issues until this past year. ):

[Arantor]

Upgrade your PHP.

There is a bug in PHP 5.3.10 (fixed in 5.3.11) where if a file is exactly a multiple of 4KB (e.g. 4096, 8192 bytes), PHP will crash.

[JKC]

Thanks, is this something I can do, or do I have to talk to my host?

[Arantor]

Talk to your host.

They should be running at least 5.3.28 anyway due to the other security things fixed in 5.3 - and PHP 5.3 itself is officially almost end-of-life too (5.6 is out these days)

[JKC]

I submitted a ticket with my host and got this:

We plan to upgrade the php version in all of our servers in the near future itself, however we dont have any ETA regarding this

What do you think are the chances that it's the PHP version causing the issue? Anything else I can do to resolve it?

My hosting plan was grandfathered in when my host merged with another one a couple years ago. I'm no expert with this stuff, unfortunately, but it might be a good time for a change anyway.

[Chalky]

it might be a good time for a change anyway.

Yup.  If your host is running an outdated and insecure version of PHP and won't commit to updating it fast, I think I'd be saying "bye bye" anyway, whether it's the root of your specific problem or not.  And I'd bet money that it is, given that Arantor seriously knows his stuff on these matters 

[JKC]

They escalated my ticket and then I got this:

We apologize for the confusion and inconvenience caused due to it. Please let us know the exact domain for which you wish to upgrade the PHP version and we will schedule the upgrade on the very next off peak time.

Here's to hoping that this fixes the problem. Thanks for all your help!

[Arantor]

What do you think are the chances that it's the PHP version causing the issue? Anything else I can do to resolve it?

To answer your question: I'm actually certain about it because I know this is a bug in 5.3.10, I know that certain confluences of things cause cache files of the exact length required - and I know I rewrote the cache code a couple of versions back to limit the cases from SMF's perspective but fixing PHP specific bugs like that was out of purview

Magento, incidentally, has a similar problem.

[JKC]

Man, that doesn't sound pleasant. I'm glad for your experience, though!

They asked me what PHP version I'd like to upgrade to... This is somewhat outside my area of expertise, haha. What would be a solid choice?

[Arantor]

5.3.28 would be good.

[JKC]

Thanks again, Arantor! You've been a great help.

[Arantor]

Any time

[JKC]

So, I'm not really sure what's going on. They upgraded overnight, and the info.php page for my domain now shows the version as 5.3.28, though the control panel still says 5.3.10.

However, my SMF forums are still loading as blank white pages -- some of them intermittently. They were all working earlier this morning, then all of them turned into blank white pages, and one eventually started loading properly again by itself. I do have errors in my error log this time, though:

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PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting ')' in .../smf/index.php on line 274

PHP Warning:  Unexpected character in input:  '.' (ASCII=16) state=0 in .../atlas/index.php on line 274

I tried a brand new install as a test and it worked for a while, but then turned into a blank page about half an hour later. I had not installed any mods yet.

I then tried setting up another SMF forum (the one I was having issues with yesterday). It went okay until I tried to install SimplePortal. Uploaded okay, but then when I clicked "Install," it never loaded. Tried accessing the forum in a different tab and it wouldn't load (no white page, just wouldn't load at all). A few minutes later, blank page!

The older forum was loading okay, until I tried to upgrade to 2.0.9. It was actually pretty old (2.0.5 or around there) and was working at first. I installed all of the update packages up until 2.0.8. Then when I went to click "install" for 2.0.9, it stopped loading. About half an hour later, turned into a blank page.


Am not sure why this is happening with brand new forums (as well as my old one). Is it my internet? The fact that I'm using Softaculous rather than installing it manually? My host? Is it something I'm doing? ):

[Chalky]

Softaculous installs can be seriously dodgy, might be well worth trying a manual install.

[JKC]

I thought that might be worth a shot, but one of the forums is about three years old and was working perfectly until today. I had a support ticket open, but they checked during a very short period where everything was miraculously working, and told me that everything seemed fine and that I should try a different browser. Ten minutes later, blank pages again. (Fortunately, even the "old" forum didn't have a whole lot of stuff on it, so I could just scrap everything if I really had to.)

[Illori]

maybe http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/How_to_upload_a_fresh_set_of_files would be helpful?

[JKC]

This is today's experience: I clear the cache and everything comes back. I try to install SimplePortal. (Though in the case of one forum, I was actually trying to upgrade to 2.0.9 when the installation stalled. Strangely, I had just upgraded from 2.0.5 to 2.0.8 without problems.) Everything uploads okay, but when I click "Install Now" through the package manager, it gets stuck there and never goes anywhere.

Eventually I have to give up and close the window because it's been like 15 minutes (I think I waited half an hour the first time it happened). This seems to break the forum and all other SMF forums, though everything else -- such as my Wordpress blog -- is unaffected. For a minute or two, none of the forums will load. Then, after a couple more minutes, they all load as blank pages.

I think it's possible that I'm breaking them (all of them at once? how?) by cancelling the mod install in progress. But I've never had SimplePortal take longer than a few seconds to install, much less half an hour. I read a thread or two about issues with mod installations, but none of them said anything specific about what's happening to me. Tech support seems to be as stumped as I am. Could this actually be a mod problem?

Whatever it is, I don't understand why it's happening to all three forums at once.

[Chalky]

Well that really does sound like a hosting issue.  As far as I understand that's the only way it could be affecting three different forums at the same time 

[JKC]

I know -- I really wanted to clear the cache on all three and try installing a mod again to see if it actually happens consistently, but I'm hesitant to do too much while they're still looking into it.


Edit:

I cleared the cache on all three forums. Installed SimplePortal on two of them and finished upgrading the last one to 2.0.9. This time, all the mod installations went through immediately. There was no wait, nothing suddenly stopped loading, and the white screen has not reappeared. I let tech support know what was going on, and the guy who replied said that there was an IO restriction () placed in my account that seems to have caused a plugin installation issue. He said he had released it a bit earlier. I don't know if that was the source of the problem, but I'm hoping everything stays up and running this time.