Intermittent site loading problem

[eluser]freaksauce[/eluser]
I was wondering if anyone has experienced this problem. We developed a site using 1.5.4 and the version of PHP is 5.2.4 (it was 5.2.3 for the past month until today) on a unix box. We have a .htaccess file with the following code:

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|robots\.txt|images|css|js|swfs|tmp)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.oursite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://oursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

so that the index.php isn't showing and the www version gets redirected to just the http:// version.

Everything was fine for a couple of months whilst developing the site. It has been live for a month with no problems. I was until today using the native session class but have reverted to the code igniter version today using db.

Now the problem is that sometimes the site will not load at all. It just sits there with a blank page, we put a test file in a /tmp directory and it echoed a string no problem, when we go back to the index it doesn't load. I believe it is getting as far as the controller as if you delete the database settings you get an error saying couldn't find table in the model. Our host says he can see us connecting even though we aren't seeing a page so it is not a server connection.

I've run out of ideas to try and narrow the problem down, anyone every experienced anything like this?

[eluser]duellsy[/eluser]
I've had a similar problem, and in the end it was as a result of redeclaring a variable.

You say that you are now using CI to handle the session, perhaps theres a global variable in there that you have already declared in your own code?

I narrowed this down and found the problem by looking in the log files, and also throwing in an echo, and moving it down the code until i could pinpoint the problem, took a while, but got there in the end.

Good luck!

[eluser]esra[/eluser]
Assuming nothing has changed in your code since the last version of PHP5, I would think that something in php.ini has changed.

If your host still has a copy of the old php.ini, you might ask for the older version and a newer version and use something like winmerge to compare the two files for differences. Otherwise, ask them to do it.

[eluser]freaksauce[/eluser]
[quote author="esra" date="1189833437"]Assuming nothing has changed in your code since the last version of PHP5, I would think that something in php.ini has changed.

If your host still has a copy of the old php.ini, you might ask for the older version and a newer version and use something like winmerge to compare the two files for differences. Otherwise, ask them to do it.[/quote]

Sorry I didn't explain very well, the upgrade of php was an attempt to solve this issue, it was already happening.

[eluser]esra[/eluser]
Have you tried to use FireFox with the Firebug extension? It's a good tool for isolating problems when white pages appear. You can isolate bad paths to js and css files, missing js or css files and other path probems that cause white pages to appear.

[eluser]freaksauce[/eluser]
[quote author="esra" date="1190012895"]Have you tried to use FireFox with the Firebug extension? It's a good tool for isolating problems when white pages appear. You can isolate bad paths to js and css files, missing js or css files and other path probems that cause white pages to appear.[/quote]

Actually no I haven't, I'll try that and see if anything is amiss, thanks for the suggestion.

[eluser]duellsy[/eluser]
there is also a firebug codeigniter plugin someone has created that may be of further use here too.

[eluser]freaksauce[/eluser]
[quote author="duellsy" date="1190049237"]there is also a firebug codeigniter plugin someone has created that may be of further use here too.[/quote]

Wow I didn't know that any chance you can post the link?

[eluser]esra[/eluser]
[quote author="freaksauce" date="1190050113"][quote author="duellsy" date="1190049237"]there is also a firebug codeigniter plugin someone has created that may be of further use here too.[/quote]

Wow I didn't know that any chance you can post the link?[/quote]

Sounds interesting. Link is here:

http://codeigniter.com/wiki/Fire_Ignition/

[eluser]freaksauce[/eluser]
Just another point, if I remove the database.php file from the config folder while it is hanging I get an immediate error response:

An Error Was Encountered
You have specified an invalid database connection group:

If I upload it again and immediately refresh the site hangs and I get no error or timeout message at any point.