Only certain EE functions broken..

[jimmiec]

I have had EE up and running since August of last year. Never an Issue. Saturday I used EE, sending and uploading and photo editing, all was well.

However, Sunday I could perform certain tasked but not others. I can send to database, but I cannot Upload to a Gallery. I can move a pic but I cannot delete one from EE server. The public index and display still work. I guess the issue is I cannot get my uploads to a gallery or delete my photos. All else seems to work fine, seems to be these only 2 fuctions gone bad.

Any suggestions?

[Pekka]

I would ask from server support have they altered anything in server's PHP configuration. Do you get any error messages?

[jimmiec]

When trying to upload to gallery I get: Cannot find server or DNS Error
Internet Explorer
Delete selected photos from EE I get: the same message
Ftp tests I get:
server: ftp.jimmiec.com
port: 21
errno: 110
errstr: Connection timed out
timeout: 30ee_store_message_write: Lost connection to MySQL server during query

What seems Odd is that everything except these 2 functions work perfectly.......

[Pekka]

Looks like the server is going on and off.... really a server admin problem, but if you'd like me to check it out PM me info to your EE.

[jimmiec]

PM Sent, thanks so much!

[jimmiec]

Thanks Pekka, I passed along the info and was given a hard-time. They are now asking me to provide a physical example they can use to duplicate the error and all I could think of was to tell them to use fsockopen() to port 21 and they will see the failure; I'm not sure what else to tell them short of giving them access to my server and have them run the EE modules.

In the meantime is there a process I can use to manually insert -ftp to site, upload file ftp and manually put in a gallery- until this is resolved?

Thanks again

[Pekka]

Thanks Pekka, I passed along the info and was given a hard-time. They are now asking me to provide a physical example they can use to duplicate the error and all I could think of was to tell them to use fsockopen() to port 21 and they will see the failure; I'm not sure what else to tell them short of giving them access to my server and have them run the EE modules.

In the meantime is there a process I can use to manually insert -ftp to site, upload file ftp and manually put in a gallery- until this is resolved?

Thanks again

Better give them this:
http://jimmiec.com/gallery/socket_test.php
the source code can be viewed in http://jimmiec.com/gallery/socket_test.phps

After the they only need to evaluate which of their service and configuration blocks the port 21 on localhost.

[jimmiec]

Thanks Pekka! This is great ;a perfect solution! Let's see what they do now.

For the benefit of your other members who may be having similar issues, I am disclosing the ISP is GoDaddy and I have Deluxe Hosting account. If you are having problems with your GoDaddy account this may help you.

Unbelievable work Pekka.....I am so grateful!

Jimmie

[jimmiec]

Well looks like I may have to find another ISP to host EE and start over, even though this has been working since August, I don't know anything about Curl or if it would work with EE. If there is no way to get Curl to work with EE or to get them to change I'm stuck. Here is Godaddy's response:
"Thank you for contacting customer support. I do apologize for any inconvenience. You can only connect through port 80 and through 443 for a secure connection. Socket to a remote port will only work if using curl. Please let us know if we can help you in any other way."
Any recommendations for a good hosting service I can transfer my domain to?

thx

[Pekka]

"Thank you for contacting customer support. I do apologize for any inconvenience. You can only connect through port 80 and through 443 for a secure connection. Socket to a remote port will only work if using curl. Please let us know if we can help you in any other way."

Well, they are wrong. Curl does not work either on port 21. They have firewalled it from local connections. I PM'd you a page I set to your server to prove this point, can't show that page in public as error reporting contains secure info. It takes a long time to run it (because Curl has long timeout) but the main result is SOCKET.ERROR 110 which means "curl can't connect to the host.".

So, in theory I could spend few days to code EE to support Curl (I don't know if all EE does is possible with Curl) but there is no point doing it as EE now does socket communication directly to servers, and Curl is only an additional layer which means instead of just saying to you "hi" I would need to tell "Curl" to say you hi and then curl would say your "hi".

The reason things suddenly stopped working after it has been working ok is nothing but a misconfiguration done by server support when updating or adding security software. If I were you I would request that the firewall is fixed to accept local connections to port 21 immediately. It does not matter if it is a cheap host, people pay for it and it must work.

[jimmiec]

Well I challenged them and here's what seems to be the final answer from Godaddy:
Godady Email "I apologize for the confusion. The issue you're experiencing with your script is due to PHP running in safe mode on our ASP-enabled, Windows-based servers, which your hosting is currently located. This disallows fsockopen commands and FTP-related functions. Unfortunately, this security policy cannot be changed or circumvented at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience, and suggest switching your account to a CGI-based hosting package, though you will not have access to our WebSite Tonight web development suite. Please let us know if we can help you in any other way."

[jimmiec]

I'm not sure what switching to a CGI account means, but I hope it means a few extra bucks and all is well. I don't understand what CGI has to do with this. Also, I don't know if this means by switching, EE will once again work. I have asked for clarification and am awaiting a reply.

[jimmiec]

Here's the final:
I did switch to their server with CGI as they recommended. Before the switch, I clarified with them that this switch would indeed fix the fsockopen 21 issue. They stated yes this move would be the fix. Well, guess what, SAME PROBLEM, same error, no change.

So I contacted them again and mention it still broke. It was yet another support person. He stated I was misinformed, that fsockopen disabled for sometime now! even though I explain it brok last weekend.

So I'm looking for recommendation from the group for an ISP to move my EE to. Please recommend. I don't want to change gallery software, I have spent too much time with EE.

What a fiasco this has been........

[Pekka]

Fsockopen is not disabled there, just port 21 with it....
I'm sorry to hear that the host is such an a$$. It's very common that cheap hosts move things around and services stop and start on a whim.

I stickied thread http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26707

Meanwhile see http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=1 and http://www.hostsearch.com/

One tip: do not get a Windows server.

[Pekka]

I searched some, and http://www.hostforweb.com/packages.html looks good to me, as they also provide http://66.225.219.162/~rvadmin/phpinfo.php which seems well configured (latest PHP, MySQL 4, Zend Optimizer, ftp, exif, sockets, safe mode off...). Ask them about Imagemagick and if PHP sockets are limited or not. They seem to have a full 30 day money back guarantee No questions asked.

[jimmiec]

Thanks Pekka, I'm checking all this out this afternoon and then will make my move. There is one thing you mentioned I don't understand,
"Fsockopen is not disabled there, just port 21 with it...." they keep telling me about fsockopen(). And I keep telling them port 21 and it has always worked. The new server has PHP safe mode off, that was a big thing to them. They stated part of the problem was I was running PHP in safe mode on a Windows ASP server...what ever that means. I keep saying it worked for almost a year, etc.

The real anger is now that I specifically clarified with them the issue, they had all the reports, the error logs, they knew everything; that they satated the move would solve the issue and it didn't.

Thanks again Pekka greatly appreciated.

[Pekka]

Thanks Pekka, I'm checking all this out this afternoon and then will make my move. There is one thing you mentioned I don't understand,
"Fsockopen is not disabled there, just port 21 with it...." they keep telling me about fsockopen(). And I keep telling them port 21 and it has always worked. The new server has PHP safe mode off, that was a big thing to them. They stated part of the problem was I was running PHP in safe mode on a Windows ASP server...what ever that means. I keep saying it worked for almost a year, etc.

Fsockopen() function is always there in PHP. It lets me to code applications that communicate via sockets (the only way net works). Each internet service (protocol) is on different prespecified port, http is on port 80, ftp connect is on port 21, passive ftp port is negotiated per transfer etc.

PHP scripts are run on server under WWW server application process, the WWW server could be Apache, IIS, Zeus etc., the domain where PHP is running is always "localhost a.k.a IP 127.0.0.1. PHP acts as user 'nobody' or 'Apache' and the permissions it gets are inherited permission from that user.

When you connect to ftp server from outside, you are "ftpnameXX" or whatever is defined in server (usually same as ftp login name). That is DIFFERENT user than PHP is.

On your server connection with fsockopen() to port 80 works. 21 does not. fsockopen() function is there and works ok.

So, AFAIK the problem is this: When PHP function Fsockopen() tries to connect to port 21 on localhost ("from PHP at 127.0.0.1 to 127.0.0.1:21"), there are either user permission messup or firewall settings for that IP that prevent the connection to the socket. Because at the same time you CAN log on to your server port 21 from outside this proves that FTP server works and it proves that PHP fsockopen() fails to a server setup problem, not the FTP server per se.

The reason it worked a year and now stopped working is that they changed server configuration (or from UNIX to Windows server with totally different setup).