Well I found the solution to this problem, and though it pains me to admit, I did forget to check a critial log file. Seems the problem is not related to PHP at all, but rather to the latest Apache release (2.0.48 and 1.3.29) and the usertrack module. The apache bug is here:
http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24483 The problem was an Apache error log full of dead child process messages, sig 11 (segmentation fault errors). Going back to the previous Apache release solves the problem, and I guess I must've done something wrong when I was installing those prior releases in my testing-- a good reason to do this type of diagnostic work in the morning rather than late a night. Sorry to bother everyone with this painfully simple problem. John -----Original Message----- From: Joe Laffey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 2:56 PM To: John Holden Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP-INSTALL] Dropped Page Request Problem On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, John Holden wrote: > Hello, > > I've been working on this rather unusual, but extremely frustrating problem > for a couple weeks now. > > What happens is that people go to visit a site in Internet Explorer, and > they navigate around the site a bit and then get a "Server not found or DNS > error". When this error appears, it is usually resolved by hitting the > "Refresh" button in the web browser (sometimes it's necessary to visit > another site, then type go back to the problem site). I've tried visiting > the troublesome sites in Mozilla, which seems to exhibit the same behavior, > but rather than displaying an error, it just stays on the current page; when > this happens, simply clicking the link again usually resolves the problem. > > I've tried accessing the problematic websites from numerous different > computers and ISPs, all with the same type of errors. You can imagine my > clients concern when it appears that their site is not available to > visitors. You can see the problem at two sites: firstchair.com and > vtspiceoflife.com--simply by clicking on different links around the site. > The problem does not appear to be linked to a particular network, as > firstchair.com is connected to a completely different T1 line (and ISP, for > that matter) than vtspiceoflife.com. Sometimes it doesn't happen for 50 > clicks or more, other times the site will not even show on the first > request. Nothing shows in any of the system or Apache error logs. Sounds like a DNS issue. Perhaps one or more of the DNS server that are listed as authoritative for your domain are either not authoritative, or returning old data. I would manually qury all your DNS server (listed in whois) for your hostnames in question. -- Joe Laffey | Want to convert subnet masks between different LAFFEY Computer Imaging | notations, or figure the number of IPs in a block? St. Louis, MO | Whatmask - It's FREE (GPL) - NEW Version 1.2! USA | http://www.laffeycomputer.com/wm.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Mail here will be rejected -----> "Sigfried Trap" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
