Users reporting seeing blank pages when logged in

[sassnet]

Hello,

Users of our forum are reporting seeing error 500 blank pages when accessing a specific forum category, Sass Wire Saloon (https://forums.sassnet.com/index.php?/forum/16-sass-wire-saloon/).  They appear to be able to see everything fine if they are logged out and browsing as guests.  However when they login, they can see all other forum categories fine.  But when clicking to navigate within Sass Wire Saloon, they see an error 500 blank page.

Users who have reported this are using various devices and browsers.  We have not been able to reproduce the issues they've experienced, but many users have complained about this.  Comparing Sass Wire Saloon to other forum categories, we could not see any difference in admin config.  

Here is a thread that explains what the users are experiencing very well:  https://forums.sassnet.com/index.php?/topic/340654-sass-saloon-access-difficulties-iphone-14-miscellaneous-problems-merged/&do=findComment&comment=4383668

Could you please assist, thank you.

[Marc]

Before anything else, please disable all 3rd party items and test with them disabled. We tend to find these to be the cause in such cases

[Miss_B]

Can you aslo check the logs in the Admin Panel and/or the Server Error log and see what error messages are logged?

[sassnet]

Thanks for the replies.  The forum isn't using any 3rd party plugins, although I did disable the GeoIP and Spam Defense integrations.  I've asked the users to try again, and they are reporting the same error 500 blank screen issue when accessing the Saloon forum.  https://forums.sassnet.com/index.php?/topic/341301-wire-troubleshooting-try-again/#comment-4386752

As for the error logs, they seem to be generic errors:

We could not find that topic.
You do not have permission to view this topic.
This attachment is not available. It may have been removed or the person who shared it may not have permission to share it to this location.
Something went wrong. Please try again.
The page you are trying to access is not available to guests, but may be available if you sign in.

I tried searching for the IP's of users having issues in the error log and found no errors associated to their IP addresses.  So those having the 500 white screen errors are not getting their issues logged in the server's error log.

[Miss_B]

3 minutes ago, sassnet said:

We could not find that topic.
You do not have permission to view this topic.
This attachment is not available. It may have been removed or the person who shared it may not have permission to share it to this location.
Something went wrong. Please try again.
The page you are trying to access is not available to guests, but may be available if you sign in.

All those messages indicate a permission issue and missing stuff. 

What was the latest change done to the forum prior to this happening?

[sassnet]

Nothing major from design standpoint, other than the forum upgrade to the latest invision community forum version.  I've visited many of these errors generated, they don't seem specifically related to people having issues viewing Saloon forum category.  Many of these errors are generated under other forum categories and people don't have issues viewing them. 

Under normal circumstances if someone views something unavailable to them, they would still see the forum, but with a specific forum error on the screen.  Instead those users having issues viewing Saloon are seeing a 500 blank page.

It's quite a strange issue.

[Jim M]

A 500 Internal Server Error is very much like the check engine light on your car. It says something is wrong but not what or where. To gather the what/where, you'd want to grab the server error log entry for this page/issue. If you are unsure how to perform that, you will want to contact your hosting provider/server administrator for assistance. Please have your hosting provider/server administrator correct any server issues and pass any software issues to us here.

[sassnet]

From server's access log:

207.171.228.101 - - [20/Nov/2022:04:11:24 +0000] "GET /index.php?/forum/16-sass-wire-saloon/ HTTP/1.1" 500 -

Matched up with the server's error log here:

[Sun Nov 20 04:11:28.829713 2022] [php:error] [pid 13096] [client 207.171.228.101:38202] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 20480 bytes) in /usr/sites/sassnet.com/forums/system/Db/Select.php on line 503, referer: https://forums.sassnet.com/
[Sun Nov 20 04:11:28.830041 2022] [php:error] [pid 13096] [client 207.171.228.101:38202] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 20480 bytes) in /usr/sites/sassnet.com/forums/system/Db/Db.php on line 1075, referer: https://forums.sassnet.com/
 

 

[Randy Calvert]

Your server is killing the process because it won't allocate enough memory to the request.  You need to have your host increase your PHP memory limit.  

https://haydenjames.io/understanding-php-memory_limit/

[Jim M]

10 minutes ago, Randy Calvert said:

Your server is killing the process because it won't allocate enough memory to the request.  You need to have your host increase your PHP memory limit.  

https://haydenjames.io/understanding-php-memory_limit/

[sassnet]

Thank you so much, increasing PHP memory limit solved this issue.

[Marc]

Glad to hear that sorted the problem for you 🙂