Maybe pruning?

[zompist]

I've taken Brad up on his kind offer... the board may be down at some point soon for updating.

[Zju]

As an aside: I wonder if upgrading phpBB to the latest version might be worth a try?

Might be worth a try, though it's tedious.

FWIW I ftp'd into the server and checked the error_log file. It has an innumerable set of errors like this:

Stack trace:
#0 /home3/verduria/public_html/cache/production/url_generator.php(49): Symfony\Component\Routing\Generator\UrlGenerator->doGenerate(Array, Array, Array, Array, Array, 'phpbb_feed_foru...', 1, Array, Array)
#1 /home3/verduria/public_html/phpbb/routing/router.php(168): phpbb_url_generator->generate('phpbb_feed_foru...', Array, 1)
#2 /home3/verduria/public_html/phpbb/routing/helper.php(148): phpbb\routing\router->generate('phpbb_feed_foru...', Array, 1)
#3 /home3/verduria/public_html/phpbb/template/twig/extension/routing.php(36): phpbb\routing\helper->route('phpbb_feed_foru...', Array, true, false, 1)
#4 /home3/verduria/public_html/cache/production/twig/cd/cd6dc777362816e4f1730d62edab105dab4b9a7c8305a07ef7290a6eb2ce1b78.php(145): p in /home3/verduria/public_html/vendor/twig/twig/src/Template.php on line 419
[08-Apr-2023 03:38:08 America/Boise] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Symfony\Component\Routing\Exception\InvalidParameterException: Parameter "forum_id" for route "phpbb_feed_forum" must match "\d+" ("-1165" given) to generate a corresponding URL. in /home3/verduria/public_html/vendor/symfony/routing/Generator/UrlGenerator.php:148

I have no idea what that means, and there's no timestamp. I deleted the file to see if more of the same occurs.

Ironically, the board is working fine right now. (Not because I deleted the file; it was fine before that. Since the problem comes and goes, I feel like it's bot activity, but I dunno.)

Prolly late for the train, but I've witnessed not too dissimilar error logs before, and it was about the server having permenantly dropped support for older versions of PHP, while the board never having had an update in almost a decade. So the board was trying to execute functions that were no longer supported by the server.

[bradrn]

As an aside: I wonder if upgrading phpBB to the latest version might be worth a try?

Might be worth a try, though it's tedious.

FWIW I ftp'd into the server and checked the error_log file. It has an innumerable set of errors like this:

Stack trace:
#0 /home3/verduria/public_html/cache/production/url_generator.php(49): Symfony\Component\Routing\Generator\UrlGenerator->doGenerate(Array, Array, Array, Array, Array, 'phpbb_feed_foru...', 1, Array, Array)
#1 /home3/verduria/public_html/phpbb/routing/router.php(168): phpbb_url_generator->generate('phpbb_feed_foru...', Array, 1)
#2 /home3/verduria/public_html/phpbb/routing/helper.php(148): phpbb\routing\router->generate('phpbb_feed_foru...', Array, 1)
#3 /home3/verduria/public_html/phpbb/template/twig/extension/routing.php(36): phpbb\routing\helper->route('phpbb_feed_foru...', Array, true, false, 1)
#4 /home3/verduria/public_html/cache/production/twig/cd/cd6dc777362816e4f1730d62edab105dab4b9a7c8305a07ef7290a6eb2ce1b78.php(145): p in /home3/verduria/public_html/vendor/twig/twig/src/Template.php on line 419
[08-Apr-2023 03:38:08 America/Boise] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Symfony\Component\Routing\Exception\InvalidParameterException: Parameter "forum_id" for route "phpbb_feed_forum" must match "\d+" ("-1165" given) to generate a corresponding URL. in /home3/verduria/public_html/vendor/symfony/routing/Generator/UrlGenerator.php:148

I have no idea what that means, and there's no timestamp. I deleted the file to see if more of the same occurs.

Ironically, the board is working fine right now. (Not because I deleted the file; it was fine before that. Since the problem comes and goes, I feel like it's bot activity, but I dunno.)

Prolly late for the train, but I've witnessed not too dissimilar error logs before, and it was about the server having permenantly dropped support for older versions of PHP, while the board never having had an update in almost a decade. So the board was trying to execute functions that were no longer supported by the server.

That was my hunch too (and why I suggested upgrading the board). I know that that’s what happened to incatena.org when it stopped working.

That being said, this stack trace looks slightly different: not a nonexistent function, but a malformed format string.

[zompist]

FWIW I just checked, and the error_log file is still 0 bytes. But also, I haven't had problems in the last 24 hours or so.

It's conceivable that deleting the 1M error file improved things... but it's probably not that.

[bradrn]

I've taken Brad up on his kind offer... the board may be down at some point soon for updating.

Follow-up to this: zompist has given me admin access. Currently, I’m making a backup of the board. Once that’s done I’ll have a go at upgrading it — which I seem to recall being a reasonably quick process last time I tried it. Hopefully that’s enough to fix it… if not, I’ll dig a bit deeper and see if anything else might help.

(Besides, even if it doesn’t fix it, upgrading phpBB is likely to be a good idea anyway: we’re 8 versions behind the latest one!)

[bradrn]

OK, the board has been updated! Let’s hope this fixes the problem…

(One rather worrying thing: the font got reset to Trebuchet MS, which is the default. Luckily I took a backup, so I’ll see if I can get back the old CSS.)

[zompist]

OK, the board has been updated! Let’s hope this fixes the problem…

Awesome! Thanks so much, Brad!

(One rather worrying thing: the font got reset to Trebuchet MS, which is the default. Luckily I took a backup, so I’ll see if I can get back the old CSS.)

Ooh yeah. If I'm not mistaken: look for content.css. Then look for .content and .content p and change the font family to sans-serif.

[bradrn]

(One rather worrying thing: the font got reset to Trebuchet MS, which is the default. Luckily I took a backup, so I’ll see if I can get back the old CSS.)

Ooh yeah. If I'm not mistaken: look for content.css. Then look for .content and .content p and change the font family to sans-serif.

Done! It turned out to be a little more than just content.css: I ran a diff to find all the places which needed to be changed.

[bradrn]

Also, at this point I’d suggest re-enabling the board for non-users. Limiting their access didn’t seem to help anyway.

[zompist]

Also, at this point I’d suggest re-enabling the board for non-users. Limiting their access didn’t seem to help anyway.

OK, done. Let's see how it goes!

[Darren]

It's definitely faster now, and I haven't gotten any error messages yet (touch wood)

edit: Scratch that, for some reason I can't access some old threads – first one I noticed was Ergativity for Novices, then bradrn's scratchpad, and also "Romance-Specific Word Evolution Game", "Transemilia", "Lang e Zafe", "Lexurgy SC (sound change applier)" and presumably others. They're different to the old error messages because reloading doesn't do anything. I just get the message

This page isn’t working
www.verduria.org is currently unable to handle this request.
HTTP ERROR 500

As far as I can tell it's entirely random – I ended up just clicking through pages of the Conlangery forum and got about one dud link per page. You might already know about this but I thought I might as well mention it anyway.

[Raphael]

Thank you for your work, bradrn!

I might have noticed a similar problem to Darren's: right now, I can't access the "Guide to writing systems"-thread in Languages. I always get a completely empty page when I click that one.

[bradrn]

Thank you for your work, bradrn!

I might have noticed a similar problem to Darren's: right now, I can't access the "Guide to writing systems"-thread in Languages. I always get a completely empty page when I click that one.

Er… oh dear. That really isn’t good. I’d better look into it…

EDIT: Testing a few different pages of that thread, it looks like they all work fine except for 4, 6 and 7. My immediate hunch is that it’s something BBCode-related, but it’s hard to know.

EDIT2: Oh dear, I downloaded error_log and found the dreaded Stack Trace:

Code: Select all

[07-Jan-2024 06:01:33 America/Boise] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function str_contains() in /home3/verduria/public_html/cache/production/s9e_renderer_b78c88a79b17f46f0cdcdd0e0bf6b1c393ec05a9.php:29
Stack trace:
#0 /home3/verduria/public_html/vendor/s9e/text-formatter/src/Renderers/PHP.php(244): s9e_renderer_b78c88a79b17f46f0cdcdd0e0bf6b1c393ec05a9->renderQuickTemplate('LIST', '<LIST type="dec...')
#1 [internal function]: s9e\TextFormatter\Renderers\PHP->renderQuickCallback(Array)
#2 /home3/verduria/public_html/vendor/s9e/text-formatter/src/Renderers/PHP.php(202): preg_replace_callback('(<(?:(?!/)((?:A...', Array, '<SIZE size="150...')
#3 /home3/verduria/public_html/vendor/s9e/text-formatter/src/Renderers/PHP.php(292): s9e\TextFormatter\Renderers\PHP->renderQuick('<r><SIZE size="...')
#4 /home3/verduria/public_html/vendor/s9e/text-formatter/src/Renderer.php(66): s9e\TextFormatter\Renderers\PHP->renderRichText('<r><SIZE size="...')
#5 /home3/verduria/public_html/phpbb/textformatter/s9e/renderer.php(250): s9e\TextFormatter\Renderer->render('< in /home3/verduria/public_html/cache/production/s9e_renderer_b78c88a79b17f46f0cdcdd0e0bf6b1c393ec05a9.php on line 29

I suppose this gives me a lead on the problem, at least!

EDIT3: Apparently str_contains was only added in PHP 8. Meanwhile, the board seems to be running PHP 7.4.33.

So do I have to downgrade phpBB, now? I sure hope not…

EDIT4: The installation instructions say it supports ‘PHP 7.2.0+ up to and including PHP 8.1’. Which makes it sound like it should be alright? I’m back to being confused again.

EDIT5: Digging into the PHP file itself (the one listed in the stack trace above), it does seem to be the code which renders BBCode. In particular, I can reliably trigger it by making an ordered list (tag list=1).

[bradrn]

I think I’ve got it working now. And, indeed, now that I can see them, the malfunctioning pages actually did contain numbered lists!

The underlying problem turned out to be with a particular vendored package, which checked for PHP 8, and switched to a different set of routines if it was detected. Unfortunately, for reasons I don’t wish to fathom, the check was malfunctioning. So I simply commented out that line and hardcoded the check to false, after which purging the cache fixed the problem. (For future reference, the relevant file is vendor/s9e/text-formatter/src/Configurator/RendererGenerators/PHP/XPathConvertor.php.)

Also, somewhere along the line, I ended up breaking the mechanism which redirects https://verduria.org to index.php. A quick edit to the .htaccess file fixed that too. But that makes me worry I might have accidentally broken other things too, so please let me know if you find anything!

[WeepingElf]

Looks fine now. Thank you and congratulations!

[zompist]

I think that would have defeated me, so thanks again!

It looks like it's possible to upgrade the PHP version, but I'm not sure what the risks are.

[bradrn]

I think that would have defeated me, so thanks again!

Once I figured out where to look, it wasn’t actually that hard. As I recall, I just searched for str_contains, and it was only used in that file, so then I just had to look for the code which used that file.

It looks like it's possible to upgrade the PHP version, but I'm not sure what the risks are.

If you can do that, I’d recommend it. phpBB advertises compatibility with PHP until version 8.1, so presumably if the new version is <=8.1 the risks are low.

(In fact, for a language as generally unsafe as PHP, I’d say that not upgrading is higher-risk than upgrading.)

[Ares Land]

That's really great -- and everything looks fine, so thanks brad!

[bradrn]

That's really great -- and everything looks fine, so thanks brad!

You’re welcome!

[Travis B.]

That's really great -- and everything looks fine, so thanks brad!

Seconded!