be on the lookout for broken attachments

[FliesLikeABrick]

As some of you may have noticed, the forums have become unresponsive a handful of times over the past week.  Something on the webserver was causing Apache procesess to gobbel up CPU and I could not find out why until today.  It appears that at least one particular attachment was causing that Apache process to hang and eat CPU.

I have yet to figure out why that is, but I'm taking the testing into a VM to see if I can replicate it on a brand new copy of SMF 2.0b4. 

The symptom from the client site was this: the user clicked on the attachment download link, and it'd say 'waiting for forums.soldat.pl' but the download window would never come up in the browser.  So then Googlebot or a user would hit the link and eventually these crashed CPU-sucking Apache processes would eat more and more system resources.

 
I need to know if there are any other attachments like this.  If any of you see suspicious behavior with particular attachments, please let me know ASAP.

[Laser Guy]

Is clicking on a download link the only way to see if an attachement is "broken"?

[FliesLikeABrick]

Yes

edit: found another one

[STM1993]

Flies, I think a problem I had could also be related to this because it happened ever since the forums were changed to new:

Sometimes, I don't know why, when I open a new window in the site (I tend to open quite a lot of windows), they may all of a sudden ask me to download a "index.php" file, instead of viewing the page I want.

[jrgp]

Flies, I think a problem I had could also be related to this because it happened ever since the forums were changed to new:

Sometimes, I don't know why, when I open a new window in the site (I tend to open quite a lot of windows), they may all of a sudden ask me to download a "index.php" file, instead of viewing the page I want.

What's your browser? IE?

[STM1993]

I use Mozilla Firefox, version 3.0.3

[jrgp]

I use Mozilla Firefox, version 3.0.3

Oh. That's odd. Can you please post the url's to the pages that are doing this for you?

[STM1993]

It happens randomly to any page for some reason. The index itself, the Grenade weapon balance thread... it's completely random.

Anyway I got a screenshot of it, which happened in the index itself when I was refreshing the page:

[jrgp]

It happens randomly to any page for some reason. The index itself, the Grenade weapon balance thread... it's completely random.

Anyway I got a screenshot of it, which happened in the index itself when I was refreshing the page:

I've got an idea: try reuploading your avatar.

[SpiltCoffee]

Flies, I think a problem I had could also be related to this because it happened ever since the forums were changed to new:

Sometimes, I don't know why, when I open a new window in the site (I tend to open quite a lot of windows), they may all of a sudden ask me to download a "index.php" file, instead of viewing the page I want.

That would only be happening because something is sending data to the browser before the Content-Type header has been sent (i.e. an error occured).

[FliesLikeABrick]

Flies, I think a problem I had could also be related to this because it happened ever since the forums were changed to new:

Sometimes, I don't know why, when I open a new window in the site (I tend to open quite a lot of windows), they may all of a sudden ask me to download a "index.php" file, instead of viewing the page I want.

That would only be happening because something is sending data to the browser before the Content-Type header has been sent (i.e. an error occured).

That is not correct.

[a-4-year-old]

if by "unresponsive a handful of times" you mean "gone for days at a time" then I guess you're correct.

[FliesLikeABrick]

if by "unresponsive a handful of times" you mean "gone for days at a time" then I guess you're correct.

if by "a-4-year-old" you mean "I am prone to exaggerate greatly", then yes.

It was never down for more than 4 or 5 hours while I was either asleep or away from the computer for a long period of time. 

The problem should be avoided for now, I am working on a permanent solution.

[Laser Guy]

if by "unresponsive a handful of times" you mean "gone for days at a time" then I guess you're correct.

The forums were never offline more than a day, not even 5 hours. You probably just have been unlucky and tried to access them while they were down.

[STM1993]

I've got an idea: try reuploading your avatar.

Just did it today, will check if the error happens again. So far nothing, and I gotta rush off.