Website not loading – Big help needed :(

  • Hiya guys, I oh so hope someone can help.

    My website test.thevintagepost.com.au is currently in the developers hands and is nearly complete but…. as of about a week ago, it doesn’t load for a day at a time, then randomly begins loading for a few hours or a day, then stops loading again.
    There is nothing to say why, no regularity or anything.

    When it happens, it won’t work in any browser, and even people in different countries can’t access it when it’s down.

    My hosting company has looked up and scanned everything and can’t seem to find a problem their end, they keep blaming the developers and the developers keep blaming the hosting. The problem is the developers are charging me a bomb because it’s taking time out of their developing time to try and work it out with no success.

    When it doesn’t load, it never loads, just continuously trys to find the page. The tab doesn’t even change into the page name.

    I can’t even login to the backend when it stops loading. I have zero access so can’t go looking for any problems.

    Usually we don’t get errors, but when we do this is some of what we get…

    I got this on Chrome
    Internal Server Error

    The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

    Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

    More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

    Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

    I got this on Firefox
    Internal Server Error

    The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

    Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

    More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

    Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

    I got this on Safari
    Forbidden

    You don’t have permission to access / on this server.

    Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

    All of us haven’t done anything that we think could cause this and it’s really putting the whole website development on hold as no one can do any work on it when it ‘decides’ to not load.

    Can anyone offer any help? It’s been happening for over a week now and I’m about to run out of hair to pull out ??

    I’m not sure what version of wordpress I’m using as the website is currently not loading for me to check… but it should be very new as we haven’t even launched the website yet, it’s still being developed.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Anything that says Internal Server Error is just that – a server error. And there will be a log of it somewhere on the server. The 403 error is a little different, but can mean a similar thing in that the server either doesn’t know what to do,or doesn’t think that it’s allowed ot do whatever is being requested.

    Both of these are server issues. But that’s not to say that it’s not some bad code that’s cuasing it to happen… Vague I know, but with issues like this the only way to diagnose what is actually wrong is to find what the servers error logs say, and fix the problems that are shown in there.

    Thread Starter hellovintagepost

    (@hellovintagepost)

    Thanks so much Catacaustic.
    I have showed that to the hosts, and have done lots of scans and come back to me with this…

    Trish,

    It looks like the index.php and some admin attempts are hanging for some reason – I can see what looks like a hang on file descriptor 4, so it’s likely to be a code error causing this. It’s not a server problem; we would have had other reports from the other users on the server.

    When I attach to the index.php process, it is hanging on read for some reason – not normal behaviour, though I’m unsure of the cause. Something in the code no doubt.

    Something to give your developer with more notes below:

    root@laika [/home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test]# ps -ef | grep trishh
    trishhun 21661 21587 0 13:35 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 22032 21999 0 13:35 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 22436 21595 2 13:36 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 22677 21566 0 13:36 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/index.php
    root 22691 1916 0 13:36 pts/2 00:00:00 grep trishh
    root@laika [/home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test]# strace -p 21661
    Process 21661 attached – interrupt to quit
    read(3, <unfinished …>
    Process 21661 detached
    root@laika [/home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test]# ps -ef | grep trishh
    trishhun 21661 21587 0 13:35 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 22032 21999 0 13:35 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 22436 21595 0 13:36 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 22926 22543 0 13:36 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 23185 21998 1 13:37 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 23357 22517 0 13:37 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/index.php
    root 23364 1916 0 13:37 pts/2 00:00:00 grep trishh

    Note that the number of queued jobs rises over time!! So something is definitely wrong.

    I connected to a number of jobs and they are all hanging reading from file descriptor 3 – which is a socket in this case. This could be due to a file open (or similar) failing and the code not catching the failure and then cascading into some other code reading the wrong file descriptor.

    I’d prefer this be tested on another server as you can see the processes are accumulating and affecting other users.

    5 mins later:
    root@laika [/home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test]# ps -ef | grep trishh
    trishhun 21661 21587 0 13:35 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 22032 21999 0 13:35 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 22436 21595 0 13:36 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 22926 22543 0 13:36 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 23185 21998 0 13:37 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 23406 22785 0 13:37 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 23640 21969 0 13:38 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 23877 23688 0 13:38 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 24134 23435 0 13:39 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 24530 24516 0 13:40 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 24771 23587 1 13:40 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 24960 24607 6 13:41 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/thevintagepost.com.au/test/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    trishhun 25015 22545 44 13:41 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/index.php
    trishhun 25031 24880 28 13:41 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/php /home/trishhun/public_html/index.php
    root 25034 1916 0 13:41 pts/2 00:00:00 grep trishh

    Cheers,

    and then another email from the hosting…

    Hi Trish,

    I was able to run an export of the database without apparent problems and the exported file is in trishhun_tvpdb.sql.gz in your home folder. It looks like, in that mysqldump output, that no data was exported for those tables as the developers say so it’s possible the database is corrupted. if so, cpanel offers repair options or the devs can revert to one of their backups.

    What I sent previously showed that the site is hanging on a read of an unknown file descriptor. I think it’s likely that’s a code problem, not a mysql problem. At this stage though, as I’ve been able to export the database, I’d say that excludes a database problem.

    It might be an idea for the devs to install Wordfence and run a check of all files to ensure the hacks of the parent site haven’t propagated into the test site – just a thought.

    Also, it looks like the developers have mixed the test site in with the production database – in fact, there are now 3 sites in the one database! This is terrible development practice and means that during development it’s possible (and easy) to corrupt the main database, and difficult to isolate the databases for the separate sites. Best practice is to separate the databases and that should be done here to avoid future maintenance problems. I understand they’re using different prefixes, and that’s a great idea, but each site should be done in a separate database.

    Does this help at all? *stress head*

    Oh…. Wow…

    That’s… Not good.

    The only unfortunate thing is that they aren’t showing you anything from the error log, which I would guess now means that there’s nothing showing in the error log… which means timeouts, and code errors.

    Their notes at the end about the developers mxing live and dev databases is also very concerning. This should always be separate… I don’t know what they were thinking doing it like that!

    But above all, this is what concerns me the most:

    It might be an idea for the devs to install Wordfence and run a check of all files to ensure the hacks of the parent site haven’t propagated into the test site – just a thought.

    So, I take it to mean that they’ve been actively developing a new site on a server that’s experienced a hack, and have even used the same databse? Is that correct?

    If it is, fire them straight away. Not kidding. That’s the most stupid thing that I’ve heard for a long time. There’s no excuse for that lack of security. As the hosting company said, thehacks may have spread to the new site, which could very easily explain why there’s that trouble. And if the development comapny isn’t smart enough to be able to see that I would never trust them to get a site that’s anywhere near secure in the first place.

    Thread Starter hellovintagepost

    (@hellovintagepost)

    Yikes scary. Thanks so much for your quick replies!

    To their defence, they didn’t know about the hack. I didn’t know it was kept in the same location so thought it was irrelevant. (dumb me) But they have received that email so should know about it now and are hopefully sorting it out. I haven’t heard from them yesterday so hopefully they are working on it.

    I’ll give them one more chance as they have been amazing up until now. Done so much great work on the site I’m otherwise really impressed with them and don’t want to lose the relationship. Hopefully they can nut out the issue.

    Do you have anything I can send to them that may give them a clue as to what is happening? Where they should start or check?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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