Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

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IainPurdie
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Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by IainPurdie »

Details below from the support template.

Support Request Template
What version of phpBB are you using? phpBB 3.3.8
What is your board's URL? (REMOVED as suddenly getting a lot of spam attempts to join the board!)
Who do you host your board with? Krystal
How did you install your board? I used a tool provided by my host
What is the most recent action performed on your board? Fresh Install
Is registration required to reproduce this issue? No
Do you have any MODs installed? No
Do you have any extensions installed? No
What styles do you currently have installed? Stock / default
What language(s) is your board currently using? British English
Which database type/version are you using? MariaDB
What is your level of experience? New to PHP and phpBB
What actions did you take (updating your board; installing a MOD, style or extension; etc.) prior to this problem becoming noticeable? Replaced all phpBB files with fresh download of 3.3.8 (except for config file)
Please describe your problem. For a few days now, my forum displays random characters (like opening a JPG in Notepad) about 90% of the time. Constantly hitting "refresh" on the browser eventually gives a normal, functioning page. Click a link and it's back to the same issue. Refresh, refresh, etc and finally I get the functional site. Obviously making the site pretty much unusable.

As far as I'm aware, no system changes prior to this happening. No PHP updates, no version updates. The site is as vanilla as it gets (it's for in-house use to doesn't need to look pretty) with no mods or anything installed.

I've contacted my host's support who say they can't spot anything out of the ordinary in terms of the database and pointed me in your direction! I have attached a screenshot of the "garbage" output.
Generated by SRT Generator
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Screenshot 2022-09-23 102740.jpg
Last edited by IainPurdie on Sun Oct 16, 2022 8:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Brf
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by Brf »

Probably it is being gzipped twice. Try turning off gzip compression in your hosting control panel
IainPurdie
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by IainPurdie »

Brf wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 4:53 pm Probably it is being gzipped twice. Try turning off gzip compression in your hosting control panel
There's no option to gzip (or not gzip) anywhere on my host control panel. If there was it still wouldn't explain why the page works sometimes (roughly 10% of the time) and not others. It would be consistently gubbed, surely?
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by Brf »

It might be inconsistent if your host is detecting the client browsers incorrectly
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Lumpy Burgertushie
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by Lumpy Burgertushie »

If the problem is double gzipp then make sure it is turned off in your board admin panel especially if you can't do it your host cpanel.

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Mick
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by Mick »

Download /index.php to your desktop and open it with a proper text editor like Notepad++, what do you see? If I browse to /index.php I see the corruption you mention but not on any of the other php files. Did you try purging the cache?
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IainPurdie
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by IainPurdie »

Brf wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 6:07 pm It might be inconsistent if your host is detecting the client browsers incorrectly
Surely if this was the case then the 3 websites also hosted on there would have a similar issue? Or is there something about phpBB which would possibly cause this issue? The BB has been running for almost a year without problem and this has only started happening in the last week or so :(
IainPurdie
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by IainPurdie »

Lumpy Burgertushie wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 8:05 pm If the problem is double gzipp then make sure it is turned off in your board admin panel especially if you can't do it your host cpanel.
Took me a while to get to the setting because of the issue at hand, but GZIP is _not_ enabled on phpBB.
IainPurdie
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by IainPurdie »

Mick wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 8:11 pm Download /index.php to your desktop and open it with a proper text editor like Notepad++, what do you see? If I browse to /index.php I see the corruption you mention but not on any of the other php files. Did you try purging the cache?
PHP.ini - depends how many times I try. The first few times I get the corrupt version. Then I strike lucky and get one that's not a mess. Varying results with the other PHP files. "common.php" gave me a 403 permission error (which is odd as it has the same file permissions as index.php), app.php worked, cron.php gives me HTTP error 500. This is viewing them in the web browser.

If I get a page to appear non-corrupt by reloading time and time again then I can view source and it's fine. Garbage otherwise. If I download any of the PHP files via FTP or through the file manager back end on my host's control panel then they're fine. Which makes sense as I only 2 days ago refreshed them all from a newly downloaded ZIP of the files from here.

Yup, purged cache. Managed to do it from within phpBB and then again manually on the server file manager. No joy :(
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by GanstaZ »

IainPurdie wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 4:14 pm How did you install your board? I used a tool provided by my host
1 click installs that are offered by hosts, can not be supported as code may differ from original files (from phpBB site) + we do not know how the install/update process is done by that tool.
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IainPurdie
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by IainPurdie »

GanstaZ wrote: Sat Sep 24, 2022 3:25 pm
IainPurdie wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 4:14 pm How did you install your board? I used a tool provided by my host
1 click installs that are offered by hosts, can not be supported as code may differ from original files (from phpBB site) + we do not know how the install/update process is done by that tool.
Not sure if I mentioned in the original post, but 2 days ago I uploaded the 3.3.8 files I'd downloaded from here and refreshed those which were in place. The site _is_ running the code from here. I appreciate there could be DB config which is unknown, but - again - surely that would result in permanent corruption, not a site which works one time in 10-ish wif you keep hitting "refresh"? Also, the site has worked fine for approx 10 months, and has only just started to go on the fritz in the last few days, during which no changes were made to the file or server.
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by GanstaZ »

Someone somewhere has changed something.. because nothing happens on its own.
You could try and make a test board with fresh files from here & see how it goes.
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IainPurdie
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by IainPurdie »

GanstaZ wrote: Sat Sep 24, 2022 5:13 pm Someone somewhere has changed something.. because nothing happens on its own.
You could try and make a test board with fresh files from here & see how it goes.
Completely agree! Nothing happens for no reason, it's just figuring out WTF _did_ change. I'm the only one with admin access to the board, host control panel etc. hence why I'm at a loss as to what could have happened. I've not had time to to any back end stuff in weeks.

Setting up a secondary board is next on my list when I have the time, hopefully tomorrow / Monday. Then see what happens if I dump/load a copy of the current database into it.
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Lumpy Burgertushie
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by Lumpy Burgertushie »

contact your hosting support again. ask for a supervisor or level two support.
many times the normal support contacts don't have a clue what they are talking about.
the stock answer to any problem is "we didn't make any changes". that often turns out not to be true.
or, all of a sudden the problem is fixed all on it's own right after you have let them know about it.

so, if you did not make any changes to the server etc. then guess who did?


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IainPurdie
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Re: Site suddenly appearing garbled much of the time

Post by IainPurdie »

Finally had some time tonight. So, I:

1) created a new subdomain
2) re-downloaded 3.3.8 from here
3) uploaded and decompressed the phpBB zip file
4) created an empty DB
5) ran the installation procedure as per the documentation on here

This all went smoothly. After installation I can also access the conversion and update pages (which I don't need, but hey)

However... go to (REMOVED BY AUTHOR) and I have the exact same problem as before. Screen full of garbage. Did a page refresh and received the standard warning to delete the "install" folder. I did that, refreshed the page in my browser and... garbage. For three refreshes until I got the standard opening page. Then you click a link and it's garbage unless you refresh and... on it goes.

In other words, a clean installation using manual DB creation and fresh files from here (not using the Softaculous installation package in any way) gives the same issue.

Have fed this back to my host as well. Any other thoughts on here in the meantime?
Last edited by IainPurdie on Sun Oct 16, 2022 8:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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