Recurring blank page issues across entire site

6 Posts

rohane Reply #1, 13 years, 6 months ago

Hi,

Our site (http://www.rira.com) has been running for approximately two years on Revolution 2.0 until I upgraded it a few weeks ago to the latest version available (2.2.6).

Since then we have experience a serious issue whereby the site had periodically gone to a blank state whereby beyond the homepage all other pages of the site are returned as blank. The only failsafe to resolve this that I have found is to either rename or delete the core/cache folder which brings everything back up for a while.

I have switched off all references to cache in the settings folders, config files etc and also disabled a number of plugins that I thought might be causing issues but the problem persists.

The server details (GoDaddy shared hosting) are as follows:
MySQL - 5.0.96
PHP - 5.3.14
ModX Revo - 2.2.6

Hopefully someone can help with this, as mentioned once the site is blank I can't see any errors being reported by PHP in the error logs or the ModX logs and have gotten to a stage that, in order to keep the client even a little bit happy I have had to setup a CRON job to delete the cache folder every 10 minutes to minimise downtime.

Thanks in advance....

Eamonn
(a very frustrated [and previously loyal] Modx user])

This question has been answered by rohane. See the first response.

1,145 Posts

donshakespeare Reply #2, 13 years, 6 months ago

Is this problem still occurring? Site looks good...

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6 Posts

rohane Reply #3, 13 years, 6 months ago

Quote from: donshakespeare at Mar 12, 2013, 09:15 PM

Is this problem still occurring? Site looks good...

Hi, yep the problem is still occurring but I have setup a cron job to run every ten minutes to delete the cache folder and have modx remake it, so it is very unlikely (but still possible) that you can see a blank page issue.

24,544 Posts

BobRay Reply #4, 13 years, 6 months ago

rohane, can you check something for me? I ran into something last night that gave me an idea about your problem. Late at night, disable the cron job snippet and see if you can get it to happen again.

When it does, check the core/cache/system_settings/config.cache.php file.

Look at all the _path and _url settings (especially assets_path, core_path, and connectors_path). See if any of them leave out the root directory name or are otherwise wrong. On my localhost install, assets_path was set to C:/xampp/htdocs/assets/ instead of c:/xampp/htdocs/test/assets/.

IIRC, the system settings cache is no longer cleared when the site cache is cleared, so once it contains a serious error, you're toast.

If that's the problem, you might be able to work around it by creating them as context settings for the 'web' context. That would override the system settings.

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6 Posts

rohane Reply #5, 13 years, 6 months ago

Hi BobRay,

Thanks for your suggestion.

I have taken a copy of the config.cache file from a blank page period.

The following entries are included for _path and _url:

'editor_css_path' => 'assets/css/all.css',
'filemanager_path' => '',
'filemanager_path_relative' => '1',
'friendly_alias_translit_class_path' => '###########/core/components/',
'phpthumb_imagemagick_path' => '',
'session_cookie_path' => '/',
'strip_image_paths' => '1',
'use_alias_path' => '1',
'phpthumbof.cache_path' => '',
'phpthumbof.s3_path' => 'phpthumbof/',

'filemanager_url' => '',
'filemanager_url_relative' => '1',
'rb_base_url' => '',
'phpthumbof.cache_url' => '',
'tiny.base_url' => '',

I have also subsequently compared the config.cache file against the file after the cache was cleared again and there was no difference between the two files.

Again, thanks for your help on this. I'm banging my head against the wall about this, especially since no errors are being recorded sad

24,544 Posts

BobRay Reply #6, 13 years, 6 months ago

Sorry that didn't work. Thanks for checking. It seems likely that your cache is getting corrupted -- otherwise clearing it wouldn't help.

What I would do next is to make a copy of the entire cache directory when things are good, and again when they're not. Then, you can use the cmp command with the -r option to compare the two copied directories and report any differences. It won't be fun, but I can't think of anything else.

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6 Posts

rohane Reply #7, 13 years, 6 months ago

Hi,

I was able to do the diff --recursive command on the two directories to get a listing of the differences between the two directories.

This was the output of this command:

-sh-3.2$ diff --recursive --brief cache/ broken_cache/
Only in cache/includes/elements/modsnippet: 11.include.cache.php
Only in broken_cache/includes/elements/modsnippet: 28.include.cache.php
Only in cache/includes/elements/modsnippet: 35.include.cache.php
Only in cache/includes/elements/modsnippet: 41.include.cache.php
Only in broken_cache/: logs
Files cache/media_sources/web/source.cache.php and broken_cache/media_sources/web/source.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/31ba4d43f28cf334d1d37fee224895e6.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/31ba4d43f28cf334d1d37fee224895e6.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/35d52733585c6f2e9a0d5e50d49b2f8f.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/35d52733585c6f2e9a0d5e50d49b2f8f.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/51b51b09432a4a12e611b43384e851a1.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/51b51b09432a4a12e611b43384e851a1.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/6a07fe2d1aeffaf3c84320252d694ea3.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/6a07fe2d1aeffaf3c84320252d694ea3.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/6c8fb1f4088d5d92d98108db3e5c6ce8.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/6c8fb1f4088d5d92d98108db3e5c6ce8.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/7d7a92ba205a3605ab65880699c81850.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/7d7a92ba205a3605ab65880699c81850.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/827daba65213fec43d65fdae51810ba5.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/827daba65213fec43d65fdae51810ba5.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/944764f2d89aee3cbe6276d6746dc5a1.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/944764f2d89aee3cbe6276d6746dc5a1.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/ae475c4347c616ac8f2b54f15fb8c520.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/ae475c4347c616ac8f2b54f15fb8c520.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/aee2ce6ed2484e4b996286db8bda5f93.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/aee2ce6ed2484e4b996286db8bda5f93.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/ba3f60f3007c64099b10506e1f8baff0.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/ba3f60f3007c64099b10506e1f8baff0.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/c0fcc83915f4aea791bf41ca2aca04b4.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/c0fcc83915f4aea791bf41ca2aca04b4.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/d236f4369af841ecf53f0fc5b71ac508.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/d236f4369af841ecf53f0fc5b71ac508.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/d77830f21ddd82849144ac3210b7a5fd.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/d77830f21ddd82849144ac3210b7a5fd.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/e00f1233dc5e1399c8a047ebfa52f45a.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/e00f1233dc5e1399c8a047ebfa52f45a.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/1/e9a175aa5e3ebe9d90626d37a2eba0b3.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/1/e9a175aa5e3ebe9d90626d37a2eba0b3.cache.php differ
Only in cache/resource/web/resources: 1023
Only in cache/resource/web/resources: 1136
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources: 17
Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/292a953583da387ce2f22b4f1f948af3.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/292a953583da387ce2f22b4f1f948af3.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/36d9112cc4b6548bc0a1a210cdb0c337.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/36d9112cc4b6548bc0a1a210cdb0c337.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/47dcdd5073a9ec52798ec5701e328db9.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/47dcdd5073a9ec52798ec5701e328db9.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/4cd14b10b92c7df353d210262d0f8b6f.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/4cd14b10b92c7df353d210262d0f8b6f.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/6be5dc37257667410648f517115e4370.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/6be5dc37257667410648f517115e4370.cache.php differ
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Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/90e89dd9b5aa6c2d146c4b240652ae34.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/90e89dd9b5aa6c2d146c4b240652ae34.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/a1e379a61586ab5aa0db7c9451f880b0.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/a1e379a61586ab5aa0db7c9451f880b0.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/ad63712f8c1a41960a47a516827e74d7.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/ad63712f8c1a41960a47a516827e74d7.cache.php differ
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Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/c892113020017a17e7e01d15acdc3f05.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/c892113020017a17e7e01d15acdc3f05.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/d52d269a91d406f2ae0ba0f1c6970b9f.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/d52d269a91d406f2ae0ba0f1c6970b9f.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/d68f351e0808eaa923f2fc2a8163ed41.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/d68f351e0808eaa923f2fc2a8163ed41.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/18/db2e09fe8cccb993f8838b902d99346c.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/18/db2e09fe8cccb993f8838b902d99346c.cache.php differ
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Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources: 19
Only in cache/resource/web/resources: 2595
Only in cache/resource/web/resources: 3393
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 00850bcfe5e293c3512e32685033ef37.cache.php
Files cache/resource/web/resources/532/020ec84e1dc62bfaf8b67b1d1597c684.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532/020ec84e1dc62bfaf8b67b1d1597c684.cache.php differ
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 038358b75e1f378a9c514c2217a2c052.cache.php
Files cache/resource/web/resources/532/08aef1dbb9c4df2773826413f3060782.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532/08aef1dbb9c4df2773826413f3060782.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/532/13b2441476e7fee7b1d1262fcaafd210.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532/13b2441476e7fee7b1d1262fcaafd210.cache.php differ
Files cache/resource/web/resources/532/13ee300a848ff186a8d166c7eddd566a.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532/13ee300a848ff186a8d166c7eddd566a.cache.php differ
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 163da2346d2b91306f490f4bd01e22bb.cache.php
Files cache/resource/web/resources/532/230cd12aeb5bbd1ea2e1fb1675aee378.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532/230cd12aeb5bbd1ea2e1fb1675aee378.cache.php differ
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 233e8a05536f1165ededef6ce777cb2b.cache.php
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 2a88afe60dd732c7033ba1334553cbf4.cache.php
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 3eb885b73cbfb0ec22c843d54c39a51e.cache.php
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 436b2c0ea2b7acfdf9226ff7d4108c55.cache.php
Files cache/resource/web/resources/532/4589b063167cf2e6427ad83e2bfad741.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532/4589b063167cf2e6427ad83e2bfad741.cache.php differ
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 71efd4d9d472aa5aca0e0a449c6c11fc.cache.php
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Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 7ac5428297e1cda0c87f859716b8ad76.cache.php
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 7ad7edfeb79eaa834edb95dad7da6ab4.cache.php
Files cache/resource/web/resources/532/7cd7db0b6c9a05d80f6be6c445f18db3.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532/7cd7db0b6c9a05d80f6be6c445f18db3.cache.php differ
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Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 914cfba99c1b98a9c0c4928adba583f2.cache.php
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: 95157681cb38561f51d0fc6e55e875c6.cache.php
Files cache/resource/web/resources/532/ad606ded529b62ba634efe0ac37fbce1.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532/ad606ded529b62ba634efe0ac37fbce1.cache.php differ
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Files cache/resource/web/resources/532/c54197133963a958a2c02e25b151689c.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532/c54197133963a958a2c02e25b151689c.cache.php differ
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Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: d8ae052a444e3ccc21a42269fd99bca4.cache.php
Files cache/resource/web/resources/532/d97f45c8075b5bf8a897128a59e0d736.cache.php and broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532/d97f45c8075b5bf8a897128a59e0d736.cache.php differ
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: dfd331d90a0446e5c9efc1abd98dcc83.cache.php
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: f28cba3f3662404f83a63d0bd3c6d004.cache.php
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources/532: fa86b6a8872c270d85f6cad13853a84d.cache.php
Only in cache/resource/web/resources: 572
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources: 692
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources: 831
Only in broken_cache/resource/web/resources: 912
Only in cache/rss: 14d37601a1463249b25fa49b059cb64e
Only in broken_cache/rss: 31f86f156856d3aeea5d994ce5549973
Files cache/rss/58591fac609b667235e1659012279961 and broken_cache/rss/58591fac609b667235e1659012279961 differ
Only in cache/rss: 768504f10d9743b895b0d54013a8c26c
Only in broken_cache/rss: c5de72e01ed4212b8897bda6b15ba3c9

Are there particular files that you want me to compare?
I really am not sure why the resource ones are even showing up as the caching for resources should be completely disabled.

24,544 Posts

BobRay Reply #8, 13 years, 6 months ago

Only the ones that differ matter (not the "Only in" ones).

I think I would try deleting just the media source cache file in the broken stats and see if that fixes things. Then try the rss cache.

If that doesn't help, I think it narrows things down to the resource cache. The next thing would be to run cmp without the -q option to get the actual differences. If the broken_cache ones are empty, trashed, or truncated (so they're invalid php), that might explain things, though I don't know what might be causing it.

I don't envy you. I hate mysterious problems that there's no obvious way to investigate.

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discuss.answer

6 Posts

rohane Reply #9, 13 years, 5 months ago

Hi,

Just to box this one off.

We moved the entire site from a shared hosting server with GoDaddy to a VPS and it would appear at this stage that the problem has fixed itself.

We were also able to change the execution time for PHP scripts as well as memory limits so this may have helped but (and unfortunately) it's possible that shared hosting with GoDaddy just isn't up to the job with more complex Revo 2.2 installs.

@BobRay - Thanks again for your help with this

Answered Recurring blank page issues across entire site