Hi<br /><br />UBB Threads was this weekend installed on a new dedicated server at http://www.koptalk.org for my busy site. I decided to dump my old site in favour for UBB Threads and everything was working fine until today.<br /><br />Allen installed the beta over the weekend until the final release came out and I had IIP running on the front page with most features enabled.<br /><br />Today, the site went down. I spoke to Digital Princeton who have been great with their support, this is their last email from them:<br /><br />Here is info you can send to your UBB person, some script is recursivlly <br />calling to a httpd process;<br /><br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br /><br /><br />Email me back and as soon as I get it, Ill turn PSA back on and you can go <br />in and shut down Whos Online and see if that helps. Ill watch the load <br />closely to see whats going on. <br /><br />------<br /><br />Any ideas what is happening? The guy thinks that the who's online feature could be causing it. I have emailed Allen but as I am in England I have no idea what the time difference is.<br /><br />Thanks very much for any help :-)<br /><br /> <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

<br />Hi Duncan, <br /> <br />Welcome to ThredasDev - even if you are a Liverpool support <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <br /> <br />I assume that you are on a Plesk account as he refers to PSA - the latest beta version runs fine on plesk - has anything been altered/customized on the site apart from IIP? <br /> <br />Is this the only application running on your site - or are there other scripts outside of threads. <br /> <br />Are there any visible errors when the site is up?

Hi - I know I'm unlucky to be a Red <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <br /> <br />Mike @ the hosting company said: <br /> <br />"the site is hosted on a dedicated box with Plesk 5.0.5 , what needs to be customised as far as IIP goes:? This is also the only script running on the server.no visable errors when site is running, the server load increases over span of about 10 min and the server crashes. There has to be some PHP script recursivlly calling to apache | httpd and not closing spawns. any ideas?" <br /> <br />There have been no other mods as far as I am aware. <br /> <br />At one point they turned the server back on for me so I could quickly log in and disable the various IIP features. I just left the shoutbox, couple of custom boxes, couple of news items, hot topic and search options on. The site still went off again after just a few minutes. <br /> <br />Thanks - I appreciate your help. <br /> <br /> <br />

Just received this from the hosts:<br /><br />Good News, <br /><br />You were not hacked. I have a feeling its a UBB coding problem:<br /><br />They dont seem to take use of some PHP commands that improve performace. You <br />can tell them about :<br /><br />http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.apache.php<br />and <br />http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.apache-child-terminate.php<br /><br />Might be an issue they overlooked. <br /><br />cust691506# ./chkrootkit<br />ROOTDIR is `/'<br />Checking `amd'... not infected<br />Checking `basename'... not infected<br />Checking `biff'... not infected<br />Checking `chfn'... not infected<br />Checking `chsh'... not infected<br />Checking `cron'... not infected<br />Checking `date'... not infected<br />Checking `du'... not infected<br />Checking `dirname'... not infected<br />Checking `echo'... not infected<br />Checking `egrep'... not infected<br />Checking `env'... not infected<br />Checking `find'... not infected<br />Checking `fingerd'... not infected<br />Checking `gpm'... not found<br />Checking `grep'... not infected<br />Checking `hdparm'... not found<br />Checking `su'... not infected<br />Checking `ifconfig'... not infected<br />Checking `inetd'... not infected<br />Checking `inetdconf'... not infected<br />Checking `identd'... not found<br />Checking `init'... not infected<br />Checking `killall'... not infected<br />Checking `ldsopreload'... not tested<br />Checking `login'... not infected<br />Checking `ls'... not infected<br />Checking `lsof'... not found<br />Checking `mail'... not infected<br />Checking `mingetty'... not found<br />Checking `netstat'... not infected<br />Checking `named'... not infected<br />Checking `passwd'... not infected<br />Checking `pidof'... not found<br />Checking `pop2'... not found<br />Checking `pop3'... not found<br />Checking `ps'... not infected<br />Checking `pstree'... not found<br />Checking `rpcinfo'... not infected<br />Checking `rlogind'... not infected<br />Checking `rshd'... not infected<br />Checking `slogin'... not infected<br />Checking `sendmail'... not infected<br />Checking `sshd'... not infected<br />Checking `syslogd'... not infected<br />Checking `tar'... not infected<br />Checking `tcpd'... not infected<br />Checking `tcpdump'... not infected<br />Checking `top'... not infected<br />Checking `telnetd'... not infected<br />Checking `timed'... not infected<br />Checking `traceroute'... not infected<br />Checking `w'... not infected<br />Checking `write'... not infected<br />Checking `aliens'... no suspect files<br />Searching for sniffer's logs, it may take a while... nothing found<br />Searching for HiDrootkit's default dir... nothing found<br />Searching for t0rn's default files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for t0rn's v8 defaults... nothing found<br />Searching for Lion Worm default files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for RSHA's default files and dir... nothing found<br />Searching for RH-Sharpe's default files... nothing found<br />Searching for Ambient's rootkit (ark) default files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for suspicious files and dirs, it may take a while... nothing found<br />Searching for LPD Worm files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for Ramen Worm files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for Maniac files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for RK17 files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for Ducoci rootkit... nothing found<br />Searching for Adore Worm... nothing found<br />Searching for ShitC Worm... nothing found<br />Searching for Omega Worm... nothing found<br />Searching for Sadmind/IIS Worm... nothing found<br />Searching for MonKit... nothing found<br />Searching for Showtee... nothing found<br />Searching for OpticKit... nothing found<br />Searching for T.R.K... nothing found<br />Searching for Mithra... nothing found<br />Searching for OBSD rk v1... nothing found<br />Searching for LOC rootkit ... nothing found<br />Searching for Romanian rootkit ... nothing found<br />Searching for anomalies in shell history files... nothing found<br />Checking `asp'... not infected<br />Checking `bindshell'... not infected<br />Checking `lkm'... Checking `rexedcs'... not found<br />Checking `sniffer'... not tested: can't exec ./ifpromisc<br />Checking `wted'... not tested: can't exec ./chkwtmp<br />Checking `scalper'... not infected<br />Checking `slapper'... not infected<br />Checking `z2'... not tested: can't exec ./chklastlog<br /><br /><br />----<br /><br />"also found some reference to php/apache things I felt might be causing the problem, but only UBB experts can answer what the problem is. "<br /><br />----<br /><br />All of above from the hosts. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

I enabled my PM as you requested but your post above has since been deleted <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> PM's enabled anyway.

Can you provide some details about your server?<br />-PHP Version<br />-MySQL Version<br />-Apache Version<br />-OS<br />-RAM<br />-CPU<br /><br />Some details about your ubb.threads installation:<br />-version<br />-size of the database <br />-maximum concurrent users online<br />-average users online<br />-are you using persistant connections or not?<br /><br /><br />Does the problem still occur if you disable IIP?<br />Do you cache your IIP or not? If so, enable caching.<br />

Sent your q's to the host who replied:<br /><br />P4 1.8 ghz<br />512 mb ram<br />40gb 7,200 rpm hd<br />Plesk Psa 5.0.5 <br />the os type is freebsd<br /><br />Could you get more info about this new IIP thing and what it does for me.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Allen Ayres will have all the answers to your questions. I'm not tech minded at all but was hoping there might be an easy answer that could have resolved this until I heard from him <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />Allen installed the latest beta of Threads as I wanted to get something on before the latest release. I think around 1200 people registered over the Bank Holiday weekend. So far over the quiet period of the weekend there was around 50 members and 170 guests online - this would have increased today I guess.<br /><br />I don't know how to disable IIP or change anything on it other than the left/centre/right off options etc.<br /><br />Threads is totally new to me and I have no experience of it having previously only used UBB Classic.<br /><br />Threads was going to be used as my main news site and I had spent all weekend adding various categories, forums and content. What should have been my first day today for everyone to have a good look around has been a disaster.<br /><br /><br /><br />

Duncan.<br /><br />Are you on a shared account, or on a dedicated server? I am assuming shared, otherwise your host would not have turned PSA off.

it's a dedicated server <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

A recursive call is when a function call's itself, I believe.<br /><br />function check() {<br /><br />if (check()) {<br /><br />echo "it's true";<br /><br />}<br /><br />return true;<br /><br />}<br /><br /><br />Or something like that. I can't think of anything in IIP that would cause this. I'm not 100% sure but I don't believe I have any specific functions in IIP. It uses the .threads functions and classes. But I'm not 100% sure that it's not IIP causing your problems.<br /><br />You should remove IIP and see if that corrects the problem. Knowing the version of Apache and MySQL and PHP will help others when trying to figure this out. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I guess I'd best wait for Allen to email me.... hope he hasn't gone on holiday <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Hosts: <br /><br />"Im 100% positive that its a php function recursivilly calling httpd spawns. I've programed in PHP/MySQL for over 4 years now. <br /><br />PLESK PSA 5.0.5<br />Apache: 1.3.27<br />MySQL: 3.23.55<br /><br />Some people are going to probably tell you that those are not the latest builds, but these are the latest builds that PLESK uses and they are all stable and secure."<br /><br />----<br /><br />Does this help at all?<br />

Yes, wait for Allen. He knows what he has done, has access to your server and he is familiar with IIP and ubb.threads.

[]Astaran said:<br />Yes, wait for Allen. He knows what he has done, has access to your server and he is familiar with IIP and ubb.threads. [/]<br /><br />Yes. I only called in here incase he was kicking about and incase it was just a simple problem that I could rectify some how even though I am no Threads expert <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />Thanks anyway guys...I've been a reader of the forums for some time.

heheh <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> I just got back in early this am and am supposed to be working today <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />IIP was the only modification added, hmmmm... maybe rick might have an answer.

[]<br />"Im 100% positive that its a php function recursivilly calling httpd spawns. I've programed in PHP/MySQL for over 4 years now. [/]<br /><br />There are only 2 spots that do recursive function calls postlist.php and showthreaded.php, but that is only to do post threading, they definitely don't create any new httpd processes. That would need to be done with a recursive call that maybe called a header("Location: ..."); or something of that nature which definitely isn't anything that .threads does.<br /><br />I did a quick search on deja and found alot of posts from users having these problems on specific OS's and php.

Found a couple more relating to FreeBSD and persistant mysql connections. Allen was going to make sure these were turned off.

[]Any ideas what is happening? The guy thinks that the who's online feature could be causing it.[/]<br /><br />The who's online screen only refreshes once every 60 seconds by default. So unless this script went totally beserk and decided to refresh over and over with no delay this wouldn't cause the problem <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Now I just have to wait until Allen gets home from work <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

home for a little longer, then another meeting for a couple hours... it looks stable right now. I'll be hanging around tonight to see how it goes <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />