This issue is not as straight forward as it may appear at first.
It really looks like a network/routing issue, yet I have not been able to rule out a drupal problem.

I have a very serious problem with Drupal cvs and I'd just would like to know if it's something you've heard about before...

The site www.wechange.org : visitors can use the site normally, but as an admin, while setting things up, I keep having , "connection to host www.wechange.org broken" error messages...
The page would sometimes not load at all, often seemingly perfectly, but some html would be missing... I can't do much work this way...

Q: That sounds like a network issue moreso than a Drupal issue though. Are you having problems connecting to your host?

A: No.
Another site Drupal 4.6 is hosted at the same place... no problemo with it...

Q: And the exact error is "connection to www.wechange.org is broken"?

A: it depends on browser. With konqueror it is. with firefox, the page stops loading.
I do manage to load the page, but I have to try 10 times

Q: Oh, I see. That's really bizarre... what happens if you replace index.php with "
Hello world

"?
That would determine if it's a drupal problem or a web server config issue.

A: see the site: www.wechange.org : it loads, especially well for anonymous users, because only the cache is used...
As admin, more includes are needed, and often, only part of the page will load...
so, really, at the same time it seems like a drupal problem, and a network/routing problem...

Q: How much RAM do you have allocated to PHP?

A: I'm on collocation. I have 8Mb to run the script..
..but I don't get the "memory run out, tried to alloctate so many octets ..." error. (I have very few contributed module loaded, yet.)

Q: What happens when you try and load the administer >> modules page? or same thing?

A: it loads... but I still get that error...
the page looks ok, but often, part of the html code would be missing, so that if I press "submit", it won't do anything, that or the javascript file will not load, so I have to turn javascript off to increase my chances to be able to work with the page...

The main problem is to be able to rule drupal altogether from the equation...

I'll try to provide later as much information as I can. I have this problem with a site running cvs (updated the 25th september), and another site running 4.6 collocated on the same host doesn't have problems.
Here is my host phpinfo:
http://www.ouvaton.coop/phpinfo.php

(Thanks to webchicks who tried to help me or irc!)

Comments

beginner’s picture

beginner commented

well,
a network configuration problem ofmy own computer is ruled out.

I tried accessing the site from another computer somewhere else (different isp), and this time I was using windoz. I have no problemin accessing the site as an anonymous user, but when I tried to login as admin, I had thefollowing error from IE:

Problem Report
There was a communication problem.

Message ID
TCP_ERROR

Problem Description
The system was unable to communicate with the server.

Possible Problem Cause

The Web server may be down.
The Web server may be too busy.
The Web server may be experiencing other problems, preventing it from responding to clients.
The communication path may be experiencing problems.

Possible Solution
Try connecting to this server later.

The problem is random but more acute when the page is not cached, and the computing power requested is higher... I cannot setup the site, even when apparently the page loads completely....

beginner’s picture

beginner commented

Hey,

Since I have more problems when being logged in, could someone please log in using their @drupal account and try to post something (anything: I can delete later if necessary, after the problem is solved). Use the system for a while, post, edit, change settings in user/edit, etc.... Then tell me if you experience the same thing...

Anything to help me figure out the source of the problem, and rule out other sources... thanks...

B.

beginner’s picture

beginner commented

Meanwhile, I'm bugging my hosts' technicians. Their initial reaction is that it's nothing related to them.

http://webnews.ouvaton.coop/article.php?id=21101&group=tech.aide#21101

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

Well, I logged in with my drupal account using both IE and FF and had absolutely no problems accessing the site, seeing the contents or even bringing up the node entry form.

Hope this helps. And, wish you good luck with sorting this out soon and getting more productive with drupal. I have a feeling this has to do with your using CVS since you mention that your other site on 4.6 is doing fine.

Ramdak

robertdouglass’s picture

robertdouglass commented

Is the menu.module enabled? I have a CVS installation where the menu.module is causing the site to hang. Try disabling it and see if you can still reproduce the problem.

beginner’s picture

beginner commented

Thank you both for popping in.
I'm following several leads, and I update here as I go along.

hlslaughter advised me to turn E_ALL on. In includes/common.inc I changed the line:

if ($errno & (E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE)) {

to

if ($eif ($errno & (E_ALL)) {rrno & (E_ALL)) {

And now i have DOZENS of error messages for EACH page load. I'll try to sift through those to find the interesting bits that could help me in this particular case.
Meanwhile, it's a very good reason to get those sorted out:
http://drupal.org/node/28540
http://drupal.org/node/24742
http://drupal.org/node/30800

beginner’s picture

beginner commented

robertDouglass: I've just disabled menu.module, but it's still the same.

My host doesn't provide any useful feedback so far (still early though...). I'll see as suggested if I can get something meaningful out of http headers (so far no) and php error message (looking for a pin in a haystack). Next, I'll try to rule out (or confirm) a hosting problem by moving the site wholesome to another host for a while...

As you see, I do have some leads to follow. Meanwhile, thank you for reporting anything that might be relevant, if only by telling me that you could without problems post/edit your post, etc, play around and ... in my site... Remember, the problem seems more acute when not using the cache AND maximizing the number of modules used, so do try to do things that require the most computing/includes, etc...

Thanks to ALL who tried to help. :-)

B.

dman’s picture

dman commented

Check this - it's an error I got today that looked 90% like a network problem but turned out to be due to the name of one of my templates.
The difference between anon & admin results you've already guessed my be caching, and my fix involved the cache also.

http://drupal.org/node/32406

harry slaughter’s picture

harry slaughter
Location Omaha NE USA
commented

i hope it's just a typo, but 

if ($errno & (E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE)) {

if ($eif ($errno & (E_ALL)) {rrno & (E_ALL)) {

should read

if ($errno & (E_ALL)) {

also, when debugging what seem to be network or webserver related problems, i find viewing the HTTP to be very, very valuable. My current favorite tool for doing this is the firefox extension Live HTTP Headers: http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/

beginner’s picture

beginner commented

Hi dman,
thank you for stopping by. :-) Unfortunately, that's not it. When I installed Drupal cvs, I knew I was not using a stable release, so I am not using any custom theme, and very few (3) small contrib modules. I checked, but that's not it.

hlslaughter,
Yes, my code is a typo. My mouse's middle button has the tendency to paste twice the same code when I click. Thanks for setting the record straight.

I installed httpliveheaders as soon as you suggested it on irc.

Today, I have more time to work on the site. I'm not watching the php error logs and the http headers as I go along, hopping to catch something meaningful.

Otherwise, my next step will be to relocate the site to another host, to see if it makes a difference.

Whatever I come up with, I'll post an update here.

Thanks everyone for your feedback. :-)

B.

beginner’s picture

beginner commented

Grr... I meant, "I am NOW watching the error logs and http header as I go along...".

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

killes@www.drop.org commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

not a Drupal issue

beginner’s picture

beginner commented
Title: Trying to rule Drupal out from critical bug/problem, re: network connection » Drupal uses too much memory: creates untold problems with phpaccelerator.
Category: bug » feature
Priority: Critical » Normal
Status: Closed (won't fix) » Active

After many weeks of struggling, I have ruled out both a network problem (the firefox extension didn't give any error message) and a php code error (with or without E_ALL).

I found out the following:

It actually IS a Drupal issue. Drupal uses too much memory.

Since my host uses a php accelerator, instead of having a 'nice' error message like Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 3840 bytes) in /www/modules/throttle.module on line 23(like here: http://drupal.org/node/11167 ), the script dies abruptly, with the symptoms described above .

Since the symptoms were different than my previous experience of the same problem (because the php accelerator had been enabled since), I didn't recognize it.

The official cooperative/host policy is to allow no more than 8Mb of memory, and we are not supposed to override this limit with .htaccess (but I did anyway).

I see two major problems with the current situation:

1- I am maybe not the first, but certainly I am not the last who will wonder where those error come from. Other admins hosted in the same conditions as I am (collocation + php accelerator + limited memory allowance) may encounter the same problem and look for ages before figuring out the origin of the problem (be on the look out in the forums for reports of unexplanable problems).

2- Some host smay strictly enfore the memory usage limit so that it cannot be overridden via .htaccess. For those admins, the only solution would be to change host (a last resort solution as far as I am concerned: my cooperative host has many ethical advantages that other hosts don't have!).

Meanwhile: a possible solution for the long term:
http://drupal.org/node/34694
http://drupal.org/node/35657

fgm’s picture

fgm
Primary language French
Location Paris, France
commented

I regularly run into similar problems on my various colocated drupal sites. One has 6MB available and just 4.6 core + taxonomy + localization reaches that limit if a few blocks are activated.

To run 4.6.3 with just ecommerce, for instance, I found out 16 MB were enough but 8 MB were not.

Since you are using CVS, you might want to try chx' "split mode" which is supposed to greatly reduce drupal's memory footprint

moshe weitzman’s picture

moshe weitzman commented
Status: Active » Closed (duplicate)

discussion about memory reduction should move to the split mode issue - http://drupal.org/node/35657