Problem with this forum

[Sven L.]

Hi.

I can open older posts OK

But when I click on a new post (the title is in bold) then I get this error:

404 Not Found

nginx/1.2.7

 

[IgorG]

Strange... Never seen this.

 

[Nikolay.]

I second this! This is an extremely annoying problem with vBulletin board software.

@IgorG: it's extremely weird that you never encountered this problem since it affects only users that stay logged in quite long and are very active on the forum.

@Sven L.: fortunately, workaround is fairly simple. Either log out and then log in again, or remove following 2 cookies from your browser: prl_forum_view and prl_thread_lastview.

The problem apparently occurs when those 2 cookie values are "overflowed" (something like 4K, if my memory serves me right), in other words when a user looked through too many forum threads. I will be quite happy if this could be fixed!


There is also another annoying problem with this forum. Sometimes after you send a message from quick reply form (and possibly other forms as well) you'll be prompted whether you want to leave the page or not, and if you click "yes", then you are directed to the advanced message composer form. But by this time the message is actually already sent! Naturally user will think that message was not sent and send it second time from the advanced form. I think this is the reason for so many double posts on these forums. Sorry, but I cannot be more specific - why and when exactly this happens eludes me.

 

[Sven L.]

thx Nikolay. relogging did the trick.

also, looking at the source of the error page it seems only to happen in chrome maybe?

 

[IgorG]

Guys, thank you for reporting. I will forward it to responsible persons. I hope it will be fixed soon.

 

[Nikolay.]

also, looking at the source of the error page it seems only to happen in chrome maybe?

Also valid for Firefox of various versions, in my experience.

Guys, thank you for reporting. I will forward it to responsible persons. I hope it will be fixed soon.

Thanks.

 

[IgorG]

Guys, I have received following recommendation from responsible persons:

Jeff discovered two links with some information that might help:

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/918154

http://en.kioskea.net/faq/15289-google-nginx-404-error

The second link suggests that this might happen to a computer that has been infected with a specific trojan. It would be helpful if the two users who say they have experienced the problem (Sven L. and Nicolay) would look at that second link and confirm if they are or are not infected.

 

[Nikolay.]

Thanks, IgorG. But if any of us was infected with something that modified hosts file, then logout/login or clearing cookies would not help, and yet it does. So this is either nginx (or other backend servers) misconfiguration or forum software issue.

Just for the record, my hosts file is modified, but by me. And it does not contain suspicious entries.

Next time I encounter this issue I'll try to debug a bit more. Currently I don't have time to reproduce it.

 

[Sven L.]

Thanks, IgorG. But if any of us was infected with something that modified hosts file, then logout/login or clearing cookies would not help, and yet it does. So this is either nginx (or other backend servers) misconfiguration or forum software issue.

Just for the record, my hosts file is modified, but by me. And it does not contain suspicious entries.

Next time I encounter this issue I'll try to debug a bit more. Currently I don't have time to reproduce it.

exactly the same here. clean machine, hosts file modified by me.

 

[Nikolay.]

Today I stumbled on this issue once again. Tried to debug it and pinpoint exact conditions when it fires, but kinda failed. Yet I have a GET request that reliably triggers it (from any IP). If you're interested I can PM it to you, IgorG.

One thing that is now clear to me is that my initial assumption was invalid. The error is not triggered solely by cookies length, but rather their content.