[Resolved] GOOFY ERROR MESSAGE . . .

Craven, just wanted to let you know that I got that message for a little while last night. I don't use aol.

Hmm. If anyone sees the error again please give me the full error message.

I got it last night for a while too. It was just one line -- "phpbb: critical error", maybe. Very short -- didn't have much more than that if that's not exactly it.

Swimpy reports, via email:

Last night the website was very flaky for a couple hours, sometimes available, sometime not. Often missing graphics or missing style sheet. I just figured the server was unstable or being worked on. No problems today.

i'm getting the problems described about by codeborg right now.

The problem comes and goes from one refresh to another, so the server is obviously continuously running.

Maybe the server is overloaded, can't handle so many requests.
Maybe network problems, intermittently dropping various pieces.
Maybe DNS problems, if there are multiple servers handling different pieces.

Probably not my ISP crapping out -- other websites kept running fast and smooth.

Maybe the new banner ad technology. I noticed my IE 5.0 slowed way down when the new ads went online. The Yahoo animated ads seemed to particularly effect performance, but that's a mild hunch. Is there any way for me to turn off banner ads for testing purposes? (Perhaps one dynamic and complex webpage that does not have ads on it?)

The new ad technology displays ads based on keywords found on that webpage -- How often do they crawl and parse the webpage? (Hopefully not interactively, while customers are waiting!)

... random ideas.

Separate problem: Hitting "refresh" drops the style sheet.

Click on "New Posts (nn)" link up top, to the left of the banner ad.
http://www.able2know.com/forums/search.php?search_id=newposts
It displays fine.

Then hit IE's refresh button.
I get one line of text that says "nd of the 'setCheckboxes()' function"
It pauses a few seconds, then continues to display the correct page content but without style-sheet formatting on it.


The same behavior occurs with "Your Posts" and "Watched Topics".
It also happens on the "All Topics" page except here the line of text injected at the top is
="0" cellpadding="0">


Environment:
Using IE 5.00.2919.6307 on Windows NT 4.00.1381, 800 MHz Athlon, 256MB RAM, Task Manager says only 107MB currently being used.

CSS not loading was just transitive and seems fine now (I wasn't online last night so I didn't see any CSS issues).

sozobe,

Does swimpy still have problems? And if so I am unable to solve them without some information.

And phpbb critical error tells me nothing. What follows is the error, that much is just saying that there was one.

In any case, it was probably this: "could not connect to the database".

The database restarted last night as it was upgrading the software.

If you have problems to report please do it in a way that I can do something about it.

e.g.

Setanta reports session errors. That means out of the hundreds of thousands of lines of code I know what specific lines to alter.

Codeborg reports enviroment and even pinpoints the problem (while others say "the site looks skeletal" he notes that the CSS is being left off).

Now Swimpy's report says "I can't open posts"

I can give over 100,000 reasons for that!! I don't have physical access to her computer. It's like calling a mechanic and saying "my car won't run" then calling an hour or two later and saying it again.

Please have her contact support (or give her my email address). Without information I really can't help her. :-( And I don't want her locked out.

Codeborg,

Lemme know if you still see CSS issues. I was unable to replicate your bug report and am thinking it was transitive.

I'll ask her for more info. I received the email from her maybe an hour before I posted it.

Mostly, I'm just giving her a conduit since she's having problems getting in herself. I'll pass on what you have to say.

You have my email right? If so please pass it on to her.

Just tried to get into the site using AOL and I got this message:

phpBB : Critical Error

Error creating new session


Tried several times -- same error message.

Went to IE and got on first try.

Well. I'm not going to degrade the forum security for AOL anymore. At least not until I get on AOL and do some tests. So I'll wait till after work and check out the forums with AOL.

Wups, the problem persists, but it's at my end. Went to another computer with identical browser and OS, and the style sheets load fine.

I bet it's the damn Comet Cursor software that installed itself onto my machine without permission. Useless crap, stay away from it!
http://files.cc.cometsystems.com/cc4.1/Utilities/2/toolbar/help_toolbar.html

This computer needs a fresh install anyways... been picking up too much clutter for three years now. Sorry to bother ya. I'll go clean my room now!

All you folks who are having troubles with AOL, out of curiosity are you using dial-up, cable, or DSL? What version of AOL are you using?

I'm using AOL 8.0 on dial-up and haven't had any troubles or error messages at all. Just wondering why you folks are all having the trouble but I'm not. Am wondering what the common/uncommon denominators are.

I am currently testing with AOL dialup 8.0 under AOL's browser, IE, Opera and Netscape.

I have not seen any of these problems yet.

The thing is, it's created when AOL rotates proxy IP addresses outside of the same range.

AOL does this in a very illogical way and causes many problems with user sessions because to the site the AOL user's IP address changes and because the forum software tries to prevent session hijacking (another person stealing your session and logging on as you) the forum software rejects the IP (because it is too diifferent).

I have already put a workaround in place but AOL might be rotating IPs in a much wider range (if they are rotating even the first quad then IP security is rendered useless).

I am not seeing problems from here (San Diego) to San Antonio (where the server is located) but maybe the Boston crowd on AOL are rotating IPs under a very wide range.

Please keep me updtated on this. I'm not going to alter the sesssion ID handling unless it becomes critical.

In the meantime I'm gonna create a petition for AOL to stop rotating such a wide range of IPs. Prolly won't help but it'll relieve some frustration. Other web designers might wanna vent about this too. grrrrrr..

The only time I've been disconnected during a session on A2K is if I take too long writing or surfing the net for information to respond to a post. I've always thought the site had some sort of idle timer that disconnects inactive sessions after about 10 minutes.

If that isn't the case then I guess I am experiencing the same thing, but I don't get any error messages, all that happens is my New Messages counter resets to 0 and I have to login again.

That's normal. After 5 minutes of inactivity your session dies.

But what they are experiencing is when they are active. And by activity such as trying to view a topic the forum is creating a new session for them. Unfortunately AOL has rotated their IP and to the forum the user looks to be a whole different computer and the forum rejects updating the session.

This is the built in forum security feature to avoid mallicious hijacking of your session. AOL just complicates this by using a very unconventional IP farm.

Hey Boss, whenever i go to the "All Topics" link, which is frequently (when on aol, although the home page may tell me that there are "x" number of posts since i last visited, there will be "no posts which meet [my] criteria" when i click that link), i get this IE error message whenever i click on thread title:

IE Error message

Line 33
Char 1
Error Object excepted
Code 0
Url http://www.able2know.com/allinone.php


Do you wish to continue to run scripts on this page?

Yes No

Don't know if that helps you or not, just another facet of aol incompetence . . .

I just repeated that and did not get any errors, either showstoppers or nuisance errors. I'll have to check with AOL after work.

AOL suck so bad that I have to maintain the service just to debug for others who use it.

Double grrr