8 replies to this topic

[jaska27]

Hi All
Has anyone come across a problem where an installed and properly working etomite stops displaying content pages? I have had Ettomite installed for an intranet for more than a year without problems. It suddenly stopped displaying content pages, though the manager was still visible, and the pages could be viewed in edit mode. The problem was definitely not a server. browser, or configuration one, and the database looks healthy. I fixed the problem by deleting an old unpublished folder, and by deleting the audit trail. I am, however, none the wiser as to why the problem occurred, or why my actions fixed it. Content pages would simply not appear. In IE, a "page cannot be displayed" message would appear. No Etomite errors would appear. We're talking completely blank pages across the whole contant of the site. Several possibilities come to mind.
1) Is there a limit to the database? The site is approaching 1000 pages of content (which is pretty small)
2) Could there have been a conflict between the furls of the unpublished folder and a new one? I would have thought that in 6.4 that would be unlikley - and besides, we're that problem has occurred on other sites, an Etomite PHP error message comes up (nothing came up in this instance)
3) Could the audit trail (it was pretty massive) have caused this?
If anyone has any comments, I'd love to hear them.
Cheers

[PaulD]

Hi All
Has anyone come across a problem where an installed and properly working etomite stops displaying content pages? I have had Ettomite installed for an intranet for more than a year without problems. It suddenly stopped displaying content pages, though the manager was still visible, and the pages could be viewed in edit mode. The problem was definitely not a server. browser, or configuration one, and the database looks healthy. I fixed the problem by deleting an old unpublished folder, and by deleting the audit trail. I am, however, none the wiser as to why the problem occurred, or why my actions fixed it. Content pages would simply not appear. In IE, a "page cannot be displayed" message would appear. No Etomite errors would appear. We're talking completely blank pages across the whole contant of the site. Several possibilities come to mind.

No, sorry, once my *content* call was 'somehow' changed to something like *cntent* . I think it was an admin user having a play and changing it accidentally.

1) Is there a limit to the database? The site is approaching 1000 pages of content (which is pretty small)

There is and it could have been the audit trail. I wonder how etomite handles a 'table too big' error. MySql is 32bit and max size is 4gb. I have never reached that but it is a consideration. Good blog entry about it here

2) Could there have been a conflict between the furls of the unpublished folder and a new one? I would have thought that in 6.4 that would be unlikley - and besides, we're that problem has occurred on other sites, an Etomite PHP error message comes up (nothing came up in this instance)

I think that would depend on the version. If up to date you cannot have the same alias, so it would not be this.

3) Could the audit trail (it was pretty massive) have caused this?
If anyone has any comments, I'd love to hear them.
Cheers

Yes, IMHO. But am no expert, just commenting and trying to help.

Paul.

[Ralph]

<<<SNIP>>>
1) Is there a limit to the database? The site is approaching 1000 pages of content (which is pretty small)
2) Could there have been a conflict between the furls of the unpublished folder and a new one? I would have thought that in 6.4 that would be unlikley - and besides, we're that problem has occurred on other sites, an Etomite PHP error message comes up (nothing came up in this instance)
3) Could the audit trail (it was pretty massive) have caused this?
If anyone has any comments, I'd love to hear them.
Cheers

You sound pretty confident that this problem isn't related to a server issue yet 90% of all problems that arise with a previously working Etomite install happen after the host has made changes without informing their domain customers... I'd check with my host to see if thy have made recent changes, like upgrading PHP or adding "hardening" to the current configuration...

Etomite will virtually NEVER run out of storage space... There is no limit for documents that you will ever reach as it's well over a billion... If you think it might be the logs, simply turn them off in your Etomite configuration to see if the site comes to life, although I doubt logs are the problem...

If you suspect that FURL's are to blame, turn them off in your Etomite configuration, but you should get an error of some type if there is a problem...

While large log files could slow the system down a bit they won't cause pages to not display...

[Jelmer]

Have you tried to see if caching might by an issue, by e.g. clearing Eto's cache?

[Cris D.]

I have also had the same problem- just blank pages- it was being caused by incorrect permissions on some eto folders (I don't remember which ones). If you have not changed anything, I doubt this would be the case.
You can also get blank pages by:

• Setting the template to googleSiteMap and viewing the page in your browser (which effectively keeps a "blank" template for the rest of the session or until you manually change it).
• taking a site off line and having no blocked message,
• there are also a few things you can write in a snippet that will cause blank pages with no error messages
• applying a blank template across the site

I realize that not all of these might apply to you jaska27, but I might if someone else searched for this topic.

[-Ed-]

It also can be an error in a snippet.
If you have a snippet call in your template and the snippet has gone bad, it can also make the pages disappear.

to check it do the following:

In your manager:
Make a new template and just add

[*content*]

and save it .
Make a new page add some text, no snippets!
Select the new blank template, save and look in your browser if this page does display.

If you can see the page now, check all the snippets loaded in the template.
One of those snippets is probably the guilty one.

Maybe this helps

Edited by Ed Headset, 08 April 2008 - 07:35 AM.

[jaska27]

Thanks guys for your suggestions. Unfortunately the problem has reappeared, and none of the suggestions work
I've tried the blank template with just [*content*] -nada
I've tried the page without snippets, deleting the cache etc etc - still **completely** blank pages. I've tried turning Furls on/off, emptying cache etc etc.
If I create a new object (page or weblink) the site goes down.
If I delete an object the site comes back up again. If I delete two objects I can create a new object without the site going down. Create a second one and down it goes again. That's why I think it is related to size. As far as I can tell, there's near to exactly 1000 objects.
Server settings have not changed. Server is Redhat/Apache.
If it is a server issue, anyone got any ideas?
Cheers

[Cris D.]

I ran a script that pumped another 1500 pages into my site it took 2 refreshes (it kept timed out after 30 seconds). I got one error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end, expecting ')' in /home/arti/public_html/assets/cache/etomiteCache.idx.php on line 599 (I expect after the script was terminated 1/2 way through), cleared the site cache and the site is back up again no problems- now with 1700 pages.

It's not the number of pages you have in your site unless there's something else quirky going on.

[Ralph]

Etomite itself has absolutely no problems with more than 1000 documents and several sites have far greater numbers of documents and are running flawlessly... If you are having database problems then it is a server issue... You should be able to go into your hosting control panel and perform a repair or optimization of the MySQL database... You can even perform optimizations right in the manager by going to Etomite manager > View system info > Database tables and clicking on the Red Overhead (clear) items...

Considering how you have eliminated all snippets with your blank template, and knowing that the parser itself works with bloated databases, it might be time to contact your host to see of another domain on the server might be causing problems, or whether they have recently performed maintenance that might be the culprit...