Major issue with forum - only affects members

[GL700Wing]

Hi Folks,

I've got an SMF 2.0.14 forum (FJCC) that has been running perfectly for the last couple of months but suddenly this afternoon the board index and topic displays are displaying what looks like lots of corrupted source code (the forum was definitely working/displaying properly this morning).

I've attached an image of the corrupted display plus a text source file of the same page (search for the word 'Corrupt' to find where the corruption starts).

I've worked out so far is that issue is affecting both my production and test forums but neither have had any code updates/changes made in the last three weeks (and I've confirmed by checking date stamps that none of the files in the forums have been modified in the last three weeks).

I've tried the following (without any success) to try and identify the cause of the problem:
Changed from https to http (repair_settings.php was used to change paths)
Changed from PHP 7.1 to PHP 5.6
Disabled Simple Portal
Switched to the default SMF theme
Cleared the file cache
Disabled file caching
Disabled image caching

There are no messages in the Admin -> Error Log or the forum error_log file that is accessible via the command line.  However, the cPanel error log has lots of weird errors (see attached).  I've checked the server load, memory usage and CPU usage via cPanel and they're all fine.

Also, and something I've just discovered while typing this message, this issue seems to only be affecting logged in members - the board index and topics display perfectly for guests.  That said, I do not display any member profile information (eg, badges, avatars, etc) or signatures to guests.

I've also attached a list of the mods I've installed but given the problem has started without any recent changes having been made and because I won't have much opportunity to troubleshoot this issues for the next 6-8 weeks (I'm currently travelling) I'm really hoping I don't have to start uninstalling them.

PS:  I can provide a guest login to my test forum if necessary.

[Bob Perry of Web Presence Consulting]

Okay yea I can fix this for you for a fee or you should be able to fix this yourself rather quickly if you are proficient with FTP, looks to me like you might need to upload a fresh copy of all the images in your ...root/Themes/xxxxx/images/ directories (where the xx's are all of the installed themes)... do that and if it doesn't change anything let me know...

[Illori]

Okay yea I can fix this for you for a fee or you should be able to fix this yourself rather quickly if you are proficient with FTP, looks to me like you need to upload a fresh copy of all the images in your ...root/Themes/xxxxx/images/ directories (where the xx's are all of the installed themes)... do that and if it doesn't change anything let me know...

even if images are missing, that will not cause the code to be shown on the page. if you are going to offer to have people pay for your services you should know that.

[Steve]

Are you the only admin and has your host made any changes?

[GL700Wing]

Okay yea I can fix this for you for a fee or you should be able to fix this yourself rather quickly if you are proficient with FTP, looks to me like you might need to upload a fresh copy of all the images in your ...root/Themes/xxxxx/images/ directories (where the xx's are all of the installed themes)... do that and if it doesn't change anything let me know...

By way of background I've been a Unix SysAdmin for more than 20 years (very comfortable with SSH, FTP, VIM, etc) and have been running SMF forums for 10 years and I've spent hours checking and re-checking that files/directories exist, have correct permissions, haven't been modified (eg, possibly hacked), etc.

[Steve]

Bob Perry, don't advertise paid services in the support boards. This is free support.

[Bob Perry of Web Presence Consulting]

Okay yea I can fix this for you for a fee or you should be able to fix this yourself rather quickly if you are proficient with FTP, looks to me like you need to upload a fresh copy of all the images in your ...root/Themes/xxxxx/images/ directories (where the xx's are all of the installed themes)... do that and if it doesn't change anything let me know...

Now how did I know you were going to jump on the chance to put a negative spin on things? IF you would have given me a chance to rescan through the images in the interum of maybe 3 or 4 minutes that I said that

even if images are missing, that will not cause the code to be shown on the page. if you are going to offer to have people pay for your services you should know that.

Now how did I know that you would jump at the chance to put a negative spin on what I said? IF you would have given me a chance to rescan the images and respond further I am aware now that it looks more like there is a punctuation error somewhere in a source files... like the original poster said, they are going out of town soon for an extended period so speed is of import... and btw, what is so damn concerning to you about whether one attempts to drum up a few bucks anyway?? I mean really? I do not twist their arms off if they choose not to pursue my services, and I am willing (and have MANY times here) to offer lots of free help and advise when I have time, if the most recent SMF update had been more stable, we wouldn't be seeing the deluge of trouble reports and issues either... it has caused me to spend many hours jumping through all sorts of hoops to keep my existing customers' sites functioning half assed decent...

[GL700Wing]

Are you the only admin and has your host made any changes?

I am the only Admin and as I'm using shared hosting it's possible my host has made changes (I've suspected this from the outset) but I have no idea what changes they would make that might cause this issue.  I'll lodge a Support Ticket with them shortly (fortunately I know about when the issue started).

[Steve]

what is so damn concerning to you about whether one attempts to drum up a few bucks anyway?? I mean really? I do not twist their arms off if they choose not to pursue my services, and I am willing to offer lots of free help and advise when I have time, if the most recent SMF update had more stable, we wouldn't be seeing the deluge of trouble reports and issue either... it has caused me to spend many hours jumping through all sorts of hoops to keep my existing customers' sites functioning half assed decent...

As I said, this is free support. If you want to advertise your services do it here:

https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?board=51.0

[Bob Perry of Web Presence Consulting]

Are you the only admin and has your host made any changes?

I am the only Admin and as I'm using shared hosting it's possible my host has made changes (I've suspected this from the outset) but I have no idea what changes they would make that might cause this issue.  I'll lodge a Support Ticket with them shortly (fortunately I know about when the issue started).

And btw poster, I love the detail you have in your original description of the problem, well done, rare around here

[Bob Perry of Web Presence Consulting]

Okay yea I can fix this for you for a fee or you should be able to fix this yourself rather quickly if you are proficient with FTP, looks to me like you might need to upload a fresh copy of all the images in your ...root/Themes/xxxxx/images/ directories (where the xx's are all of the installed themes)... do that and if it doesn't change anything let me know...

By way of background I've been a Unix SysAdmin for more than 20 years (very comfortable with SSH, FTP, VIM, etc) and have been running SMF forums for 10 years and I've spent hours checking and re-checking that files/directories exist, have correct permissions, haven't been modified (eg, possibly hacked), etc.

Cool beans, okay... yea I have a similar background in the IBM programming realm... been dabbling with PHP/MySQL/HTML and SMF since 2006 after about 25 years in a different world... don't claim to be a guru, but do pretty well with what I know...

[Bob Perry of Web Presence Consulting]

Hmm, nothing in normal logs? oops, there ya go, the cpanel log seems to be mostly in the .../Thing/... theme, try upload fresh copies of all files and folders of that theme, the only thing that you'll have to worry about is re-installing the other modules that change anything in that theme... since it only affects registered users and after taking a gander at your list of modules, it could take some doing to track this down if that doesn't work... I thought I had a large list of modules, dude!!!

[GL700Wing]

One other thing I forgot to mention in my original post is that in the topic display (25 posts per page) the first 14-15 posts display perfectly and the display corruption starts after that.

I tried reducing the number of posts per page to 15 but that didn't fix the problem so I've just now reduced it to 10 posts per page (and I've reduced the number of posts displayed on the board index from 50 to 25) and it looks okay again.

Also, the other thing is that this display corruption issue has not affected any other parts of the forum - only the board index and topic display (it's almost as if it has something to do with the number of characters per page load).

[GL700Wing]

Hmm, nothing in logs?... since it only affects registered users and after taking a gander at your list of modules, it could take some doing to track this down... I thought I had a large list of modules, dude!!!

Nothing in the logs for either of the forums it is affecting (only the weird stuff in the cPanel error log) and from what I can see it is not affecting guests.

Lot of mods plus some other customisations but as I said, up until about 8 hours ago, it's been working flawlessly for the last two months (basically since the day it went live - it was converted from vBulletin) and I haven't made any changes in the last few weeks.

[Shambles]

Can you provide a registered test account please?

[shawnb61]

To me, this looks like multiple themes got corrupted.

Guests use the default theme.   If guests are ok, maybe your default theme is ok.

Log in as a member, and check to see if changing your theme to default improves things.    If so, I'd consider either reinstalling the affected themes, or, setting all users to the default theme.

[Shambles]

I requested a test account to do some "view page source" comparisons, as the default theme and the Curve theme are both intact - leading me to believe that it's possibly the poster/profile area that's at fault.

[GL700Wing]

I requested a test account to do some "view page source" comparisons, as the default theme and the Curve theme are both intact - leading me to believe that it's possibly the poster/profile area that's at fault.

Login to Test forum (which has same issue and for which I have not adjusted the topic/post per page counts) sent by PM.

Thanks in anticipation.

[GL700Wing]

To me, this looks like multiple themes got corrupted.

Guests use the default theme.   If guests are ok, maybe your default theme is ok.

Log in as a member, and check to see if changing your theme to default improves things.    If so, I'd consider either reinstalling the affected themes, or, setting all users to the default theme.

I already tried changing to the default SMF theme but it didn't fix the issue.

[Shambles]

On your test forum I changed "Show quick-moderation as" from "don't show" to "checkboxes" and got a 99% successful page display for all posts in topic 144.0 (Membership Subscription).

So I thought "that's part of the issue".

Until I did a hard refresh and back came the corruption, in a different style. In fact each page refresh results in a different level/style of corruption.

I suggest pursuing it with your host - to me it seems your output buffer sizes (OBs) are smaller than they should be, which may be linked to your php.ini settings.  Thing is, why does the corruption not occur for guests? It must be related to items which do not show for guests, or scripts which are not required to run.

I'll lodge a Support Ticket with them shortly (fortunately I know about when the issue started).

No more time to look into this - I have to return to work. Good luck.