"Edit Categories" COMPLETELY stopped working??

[camarosource]

Using PhotoPost Gallery 7.02 (I use phpbb which is why there is no other version installed)

I was editing my Categories last night (brand new installed, no pictures were posted but around 20 categories) and all of a sudden there was an error that I couldn't see in time and ever since then, clicking "Edit Categories" completely stopped working.

In fact every link seems to work in admin panel EXCEPT "edit categories". When you click the link in the admin panel on the left, it acts like it is trying to load "loading ...." in browser but will sit there endlessly and never comes up.

I've tried firefox, interior Explorer thinking it was a browser problem but I've had a friend try it by logging into my account and they too cannot get it to work.

Is this a known bug?

[Chuck S]

No real issues that I know of or has been reported here. Code wise nothing have changed in edit categories in a long long time. Your issue would be related to whatever mysql issue apparently happened on your server.

I would need to know what that error is to assist. Any server logs error logs that might help? Have you tried repairing your mysql tables?

[camarosource]

My host has DISABLED the gallery and sent me THIS!


Trouble Ticket Response To Ticket #592975
Newest Response Sent on 2011-01-16 at 09:20:38 EST:

Hello,

The reason for the spike in the servers load average is the /gallery/adm-cats.php file. Multiple instances were running which had the load average above 50. After all processes being run by your user were killed and the aforementioned PHP file were chmod to 000, the load average has remained stable below .2 It would appear that the software in the /gallery directory is the cause of the high load average on the host and will require that you look into resolving this issue as other customers on this server are beginning to complain about poor performance on this host caused by the gallery.

[Chuck S]

I do not think I have every seen such a thing but that explains why it is not working they disabled it.

Have they considered that this might have been some random instance on there server. Is there any more information they gave you? what type of multiple instances where running open mysql connection? A bit more information would help but being how over 50000 customers run the software and I have never seen any issues like this I need more information as I do not really know anything software side that would help.

[camarosource]

The program itself almost as if got stuck in a LOOP! I ran it to move a bunch of categories and then it continued to run after I closed the program. They claim it was the cause of the problems and took down their server due to many instances of being run.

[Chuck S]

I understand I am just thinking without more information here its hard to say what the issue really is. It could be a server issue here. It could have been a fluke problem on there end. Was it an open mysql connection? These are the types of things I would need to know.

Your host is the one who needs to fix permissions on the file and enable it so your program can operate short of that you need to move hosts. Things worked on your end till they shut it down. After the action was performed your server should shut down any file process. If its open mysql connections a few well placed mysql close connections might help. Need more info.

Just let me have more info here and then I can maybe try a few things that might help.

[camarosource]

Hello.

Still waiting on an answer from my host but I did find this interesting.. For a website that is only known to me and my programmer. In 5 days the site did close to a bit over 1.7 GIG's of http traffic.. The first day when I was editing the categories and went to the parent (of around 30 children), it crashed.. That day nearly 525megs were produced of Http Traffic.

Up until that day approx 5-10megs a day..

Going by webalizer, on the 11th (first day this occurred), over 624,000kbytes and 18,0 00+ hits with only 6 visits were transferred on a site that doesn't even exist on google, it's a site my programmer and I are working on in secret in the background.

Up until that 11th day, it was around 4,000kybtes and around 200-2000megs hits.

[camarosource]

OK. They reactivated the adm-cats.php which they CHMOD offline this morning. I had the server stats in one window. Clicked the link [private]/gallery/adm-cats.php?ppaction=cats&start=1

and the MOMENT I clicked it.. Once again.. nothing loads..

BUT the server went from

Server Load 0.22 (1 cpu)

to

Server Load 1.69 (1 cpu)

And now it's CRASHED again!

NOW.. I have stopped the program (well refreshed browser). And each time I refresh the statis, the server is going UP by itself.. Now it's at 2.88 (1 cpu)

How the HECK can this be possible??

I tried an experiment and went into my FTP, and changed the CHMOD on the adm-cats.php to 0

and the stats on the server are now DROPPING to 1.48

Then suddenly it's jumping back to 1.89

I even REINSTALLED it to see and the moment clicked it and it still did it.. Click that link and it's all BLANK..

I was planning to open the new site this friday (2 years in the making) and now the entire site is on hold.

Host is likely not going to be very happy because it's taken down their server again and they had other complaints from customers before..

[camarosource]

I even DELETED the file now off the server.. It's taken down the OTHER server down now! THAT server is now at 8.09 (4 cpus)

I have 1 website which is currently being active on 1 server, it then is subdomained onto another server, well server 1 is now CRASHED and server 2 (which the new site is on and what the gallery is installed on) is at 2.03 (1 cpu)

I checked the logs after I crashed the other server and this is what is shows.

/gallery/adm-cats.php?ppaction=cats&start=1
Http Code: 404 Date: Jan 17 04:17:56 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 613
Referer: [PRIVATE]/gallery/adm-misc.php?admact=sidemenu
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E)

Now the adm-cats.php did exist at that time (was before I CHMOD and then Deleted it).

On the actual server error log

[Mon Jan 17 04:17:56 2011] [error] [client 173.183.91.181] File does not exist: /home/[PRIVATE]/public_html/gallery/adm-cats.php, referer: http://[PRIVATE]/gallery/adm-misc.php?admact=sidemenu

and on the Raw access logs

(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E)"
173.183.91.181 - - [17/Jan/2011:03:49:06 -0500] "GET /gallery/adm-cats.php?ppaction=cats&start=1 HTTP/1.1" 404 - "http://[PRIVATE]/gallery/adm-misc.php?admact=sidemenu"

[camarosource]

UPDATE Again..


I have my host experimenting and sent this

Trouble Ticket Response To Ticket #592975
Newest Response Sent on 2011-01-17 at 05:39:54 EST:

Hi,

I just tested on this end and got the following
results:

Clicking on the Edit Categories link in the admin
section results in a 404 error:

[17/Jan/2011:05:21:13 -0500] - 404
\"GET /gallery/adm-cats.php?ppaction=cats&start=1 HTTP/1.1\"
referrer: http://[PRIVATE]/gallery/adm-misc.php?admact=sidemenu

Despite the 404 error a php process referencing
/home/[PRIVATE]/public_html/gallery/adm-cats.php
appears in top running under your host user.

Approximately 1 minute after clicking on the
Edit Categories link a 500 internal server error
appears in the main frame in the admin section.
At that point there is an entry in the server\'s
error_log referencing a generic \'Premature end
of script headers\' error:

Mon Jan 17 05:22:10 2011] [error]
Premature end of script headers: adm-cats.php
referer: http://[PRIVATE]/gallery/adm-misc.php?admact=sidemenu

Despite the 404 and 500 errors the associated PHP
process remains active using high CPU resources
and causing a load spike.

I noted and corrected a few incorrect permissions
(the host87 server runs suPHP therefore no files
or folders should have group or world write access,
all files should be 644 and all folders 755) however
that doesn\'t seem to have been the cause of this
problem.

[Chuck S]

Let's break this down. First there should be no issues with 404's the admin panel is two frames the left frame is the sidemenu and that url should be valid from what I see. If I subsitute my domain name for where you have private in the url in my browser it shows my admin panel sidebar. You can try that yourself with your url it is valid.

Your real issue here seems to be your very very generic 500 error the server is giving and really is a result of your server not the script in part. They are complaining somehow processes are not closing well thats correct because they are shutting them down Somehow whatever is going on with your categories as I do not know what you did it is taking time to load. Say your host has a 30 second time limit what happens is the server timesout the process and is suppose to close that connection. You of course click the categories thing again trying to get it to work so your opening all the connections and your server times them out however they are not closing them. If the server kills a process then they need to kill it. Server trumps software every time here. If our software is going interupted by the server there is nothing we can do about connections the server needs to kill that connection.

I will gladly help you figure out what you did to your cats table in mysql that might be causing a hangup if thats the cause of things taking awhile to load but this part of course is just a guess because a 500 error really does not give anyone a real error. Your host knows this. I was really hoping for a more technical response from your host then a 500 error.

You can send any relevant site login url ftp credentials etc through the contact us link in the header so I can take a peek if you want.

[camarosource]

Originally Posted by Chuck S

Your issues have to be related to your servers suPHP setup somehow here in part.

Let's break this down. First there should be no issues with 404's the admin panel is two frames the left frame is the sidemenu and that url should be valid from what I see. If I subsitute my domain name for where you have private in the url in my browser it shows my admin panel sidebar. You can try that yourself with your url it is valid.

Your real issue here seems to be your very very generic 500 error the server is giving and really is a result of your server not the script in part. They are complaining somehow processes are not closing well thats correct because they are shutting them down Somehow whatever is going on with your categories as I do not know what you did it is taking time to load. Say your host has a 30 second time limit what happens is the server timesout the process and is suppose to close that connection. You of course click the categories thing again trying to get it to work so your opening all the connections and your server times them out however they are not closing them. If the server kills a process then they need to kill it. Server trumps software every time here. If our software is going interupted by the server there is nothing we can do about connections the server needs to kill that connection.

I will gladly help you figure out what you did to your cats table in mysql that might be causing a hangup if thats the cause of things taking awhile to load but this part of course is just a guess because a 500 error really does not give anyone a real error. Your host knows this. I was really hoping for a more technical response from your host then a 500 error.

You can send any relevant site login url ftp credentials etc through the contact us link in the header so I can take a peek if you want.

Emailed access to my phpmyadmin. Thanks. I am SURE it is related to my editing of categories.

[Chuck S]

Thats good. Hopefully your host can give you also a more detailed error instead of 500 error. Thats way to generic and a server side error they need to diagnose. If they can come back with a more detailed error that would be great.