Issue with infinite redirects and 404 error when visiting my forum.

[Gabriel Petrelli]

A couple things to mention, I use an encoded SEO solution (Community Seo) for IPB3 and an encoded Arcade modification. I just recently purchased a VPS and moved all sites to the VPS.

I ran into an issue a couple days back where visiting my forum would give infinite redirects when visiting the index and portal pages in Firefox (the usual Firefox has detected the server isn't redirecting the page properly), I get a 404 error when visiting my forum in Internet Explorer 8. Please keep in mind nothing changed on my site that would cause this issue.

This only happens when I'm not logged into my forum, as long as I'm logged in I am able to browse normally, the infinite redirects and 404 errors only happen to guests on the index and portal pages. Also guests are able to access every other page on the forum and site except for the forum index and portal. Both the index and portal pages are rewritten by the encoded SEO modification I mentioned above.

My host seems to think it was an issue with my site even though I'm sure it's not, reason being is replacing all files in my forum with a backup fixed the issue.

Even though replacing the files in my forum directory fixed this the issue, I am confident and certain this is a server side issue.

I had them re-image my VPS and restore my account due to making a mess out of the VPS the last time. Everything was working fine on my site when I ran Apache in DSO mode, however I noticed strange permission issues with running Apache as a DSO and I also host other sites so I opted to go with a combination of FastCGI, Zend Optimizer and eAccelerator.

So I start EasyApache and select the following Apache and PHP modules/extensions:

Apache Modules:

Mod FCGID
MPM Prefork

Other Modules:

Mod SuPHP
Mod Bandwidth
Suhosin for PHP
Source Guardian Loader for PHP

PHP modules/extensions:

FastCGI
Force CGI Redirect

After enabling these and recompiling PHP and Apache, I start having the same exact problem again and reproduced the same problem through this method.

I can't figure out what these extensions/modules did or how to solve it short of replacing the files in the forum directory with a backup of before the change which I don't think is an option now, it seems these modules/extensions modified a file somewhere in my forum directory or did something else. I've tried informing my host of this but they keep insisting it's a problem with my site, which I am certain it isn't as nothing has changed on my site that would cause this. So the only possible explanation is what changed on the server as I mentioned above.

I'm at a loss what to do, I've already tried deselecting these and recompiling PHP and Apache again with EasyApache to no avail. I hope that someone here can figure out what the issue may be and help me solve it.