Bug When publishing CMS article I get a 500 server error and 28 posts get created in db

[bzcomputers]

I did see this happen about a week ago when I created a CMS article and it just happened again a few minutes ago. I then retested and got the same thing.

I can't say for certain it's DBSEO but I don't believe I've changed anything on the server other than DBSEO updates and the recent vbDownloads update, since it was working without issue.

What is happening...

I create an article and then attempt to publish it. The publishing process appears to hang-up and I get a 500 internal server error. If I go back to the CMS page I see the article has been published correctly but it already shows approximately 30 views. The publisher of the article's post count also has jumped approx. 30 posts. I then checked the db and see exactly 28 odd posts relating to the article for this publisher in the posts table.

The "pagetext" within this posts all begin "You can view the page at
a) You can view the page at [url=http://www.mysitename.com/forum/content/test-205/]CRUISIN - test
b) You can view the page at CRUISIN - Internal Server Error[/QUOTE]

The "ip address" for these posts is also attributed to the server ip.

I tested with different users, with and without attachments, all with the same result. The article appears to publish ok, but the db gets 28 post entries and the view count is off by about the same immediately after posting.

If I save the article without publishing I did not see any issues, so it appears to be when publishing that the issue occurs.

 

[Fillip H.]

You certainly win the "Strangest Issue Ever Reported To A Developer" prize with this one

I'll be looking into this on your site as soon as I have time, I will temporarily disable DBSEO and possibly other products on your site during those tests. I'll post back here when I begin.

 

[bzcomputers]

Came across this in Google Webmaster tools tonight:



It appears to possibly be related to my original post.

I just went through and manually deleted all duplicates in "f10" the CMS forum.


I think you'll be able to duplicate this issue I'm seeing by just creating a CMS article.

 

[Fillip H.]

Can you give me the output of the error_log when this happens? I attempted to post an article just now, so that should narrow it down timestamp wise.

 

[bzcomputers]

Can you give me the output of the error_log when this happens? I attempted to post an article just now, so that should narrow it down timestamp wise.

A bunch of these repeated...

* Closing connection #0
[Thu Dec 26 08:46:39 2013] [warn] [client 50.63.145.150] mod_fcgid: read data timeout in 40 seconds
[Thu Dec 26 08:46:39 2013] [error] [client 50.63.145.150] Premature end of script headers: dbseo.php
Out of memory
[Thu Dec 26 08:46:39 2013] [warn] [client 50.63.145.150] (104)Connection reset by peer: mod_fcgid: error reading data from FastCGI server
[Thu Dec 26 08:46:39 2013] [error] [client 50.63.145.150] Premature end of script headers: dbseo.php
< HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
< Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2013 14:45:58 GMT
< Server: Apache/2.2.23 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.23 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_fcgid/2.3.6
< X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.21
< Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
< Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
< Pragma: no-cache
< Set-Cookie: bb_; path=/; domain=.cruisin.me; HttpOnly
< Set-Cookie: bb_lastvisit=1388069199; expires=Fri, 26-Dec-2014 14:46:39 GMT; path=/; domain=.cruisin.me
< Set-Cookie: bb_lastactivity=0; expires=Fri, 26-Dec-2014 14:46:39 GMT; path=/; domain=.cruisin.me
< Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=77c88ced11dd7e7a5f03ac4d18ee81cf; path=/
< Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate
< Vary: Accept-Encoding
< Connection: close
< Content-Type: text/html
<
* Closing connection #0
< HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
< Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2013 14:45:59 GMT
< Server: Apache/2.2.23 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.23 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_fcgid/2.3.6
< X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.21
< Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
< Cache-Control: private
< Pragma: private
< Set-Cookie: bb_; path=/; domain=.cruisin.me; HttpOnly
< Set-Cookie: bb_lastvisit=1388069200; expires=Fri, 26-Dec-2014 14:46:40 GMT; path=/; domain=.cruisin.me
< Set-Cookie: bb_lastactivity=0; expires=Fri, 26-Dec-2014 14:46:40 GMT; path=/; domain=.cruisin.me
< Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=bc97fd74e1327e31da83c7e8d9427215; path=/
< Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate
< Vary: Accept-Encoding
< Connection: close
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

<

 

[Fillip H.]

Out of memory? What's the memory limit for your PHP install?

 

[bzcomputers]

Out of memory? What's the memory limit for your PHP install?

Interesting.

I just checked what was being reported by vB admincp it says "PHP Memory Limit: none". Rechecked php.ini and it says 64mb (which is also what I'm use to seeing reported by vb, but I couldn't tell you how long its said none for).


Edit:
WHM also shows it set at 64M.

I should further explain I'm seeing the "none" reference only in the initial report by vB right at the top of the default admin cp. Under "view php info" under maintenance I do also see it reported as 64mb.

This is interesting I assume both the "Local Value" (middle column) and "Master Value" (last column) should be reporting the same...

 

[Fillip H.]

The local value resolves to 128M, I'm not entirely sure what's going on with vB reporting it as "none".

 

[bzcomputers]

Even more odd is if I check phpinfo outside of vB I get this:




So it must be something within vB that is referring to the 128mb. The only other core value I saw that was reporting differently from within vb versus outside was this:



The above was reported within vB. Outside of vB both values were 22519.

 

[Fillip H.]

I wish it was more descriptive where it was running out of memory =/

As of right now I have no way of knowing, short of randomly commenting out blocks of code until I find the right one. Are there no other error logs to refer to?

 

[bzcomputers]

I disabled all hooks and phpinfo was reporting 64M for both local and master. Although still showing "none" on the top of the admincp.

Let me track down which add-on is causing the local to jump to 128 then I'll disable it and see if it the dbseo error goes away. I'll report back when I come up with anything more. I'll also recheck all the logs for any additional info.

 

[bzcomputers]

I've tracked down the mod that is causing the memory_limit to change from 64M to 134217728 and it's DBTech's Advanced Post Thanks / Like 3.17.

 

[bzcomputers]

Disabling DBTech's Advanced Post Thanks / Like 3.17 did not fix the reported CMS issue.

Although if I disable DBSEO the CMS issue (500 internal server error, followed by numerous forum posts) goes away and articles post just fine with just one forum post.

I'll retest now after changing memory_limit to something higher.

---------------------------------------------
Still getting same issues.

On the last test, when clicking on the "Save" button to publish a CMS article with title "Test 55" the url looks like:
CRUISIN

Then it showed a 500 Internal Server Error when it automatically took me to:
CRUISIN - test 55

(normally it would take me to my custom 500 error page, but this may shed some more light on the issue)

 

[Fillip H.]

APTL does not change the memory limit in any way, I don't see how that can be responsible

 

[bzcomputers]

APTL does not change the memory limit in any way, I don't see how that can be responsible

I looked at the plugins also for the APTL mod and didn't see any memory_limit references either. I just know that it was the only mod I turned off and on from the admin cp that would change the limit from reporting 64M to 134217728 for Local Memory Limit. I went through my entire list twice. Then retested specifically with APTL numerous times and each time disabling to enabling showed the change. Not sure it's causing any issues though.

 

[Fillip H.]

I have traced this problem further. It appears to be a bug in the CMS, ironically with the following comment

			//if we are caching, force the comment thread self heal to run first.
			//this prevents a bad threadid from getting into the cache, which
			//causes the self heal code to run extra times creating bad threads.

 

[Fillip H.]

Update: As vB 4.2.2 does not appear to be susceptible to this issue, I'm comparing the code for the vBCMS package in 4.2.0 to 4.2.2 in order to attempt to fix it. I've backed up your existing files in case something goes wrong.

 

[trocobob]

I have also the same problem , and my Vb version 4.2.1
do you mean upgrading VB forum will fix the problem ?

 

[bzcomputers]

Update: As vB 4.2.2 does not appear to be susceptible to this issue, I'm comparing the code for the vBCMS package in 4.2.0 to 4.2.2 in order to attempt to fix it. I've backed up your existing files in case something goes wrong.

Thanks, for the update.

I was still trying to track this issue down myself.

I increased the memory_limit (64mb to 128mb), updated apache 2.2 to 2.4, updated the mod_fcgid from 2.3.6 to the most current 2.3.9 since that is what was showing the logged error - none of which fixed the problem.

Glad to see you've made more progress than me!


Edit: Just an FYI - I also tracked down the PHP Memory Limit reported as "None" on the main admincp page to a known bug in 4.2.0 also.

 

[Fillip H.]

I can't seem to get any further on this issue.

What's happening is that for some inexplicable reason, this block of code is getting called over and over again:

		// Get comments
		if (self::VIEW_PAGE == $viewtype AND vB::$vbulletin->options['vbcmsforumid'] > 0 AND $this->content->isPublished() AND !$this->isSection())
		{
			try
			{
				$thread = $this->getAssociatedThread();
				$view->show_comments = ($thread AND $thread->can_view(new vB_Legacy_CurrentUser()));

				if ($view->show_comments)
				{
					$postids = $this->getCommentPosts($thread);
					require_once DIR . '/includes/functions_forumdisplay.php' ;
					$view->thread = process_thread_array($thread->get_record());
				}
			}
			catch (Exception $e)
			{
				if (vB::$vbulletin->config['debug'])
				{
					throw ($e);
				}
			}
		}

in /packages/vbcms/content.php so I commented it out. It appears to be "working" now.

PS: I noticed a lot of the other comment threads were broken too, and since you had no comments I pruned the comments forum. You can edit and re-save the articles to re-generate them, and hopefully this time it should only be one thread.