specials function is freezing up my site

A few weeks ago, I went in to deactivate some specials and activate new ones. While I was deactivating specials, the site froze up, then went to "cannot find server." At first, I took this as a coincidence, just one of those occasional web glitches. But when the site came back up, I found that trying to deactivate further specials kept resulting in "cannot find server"--not just for zencart, but when I went to my site directly--it was down.

As the weeks progressed, I found that whenever I went into Admin to deactivate and activate specials, the site would go down pretty much every 2 actions--I deactivated 2 specials, the site went down. I deactivated two more specials when it came up, and the site went down. I activated 2 specials, and the site went down... etc.

This has now been happening every time I activate or deactivate specials, and it's getting durned frustrating.

This is the only function in zencart admin that causes this to happen.

Has anyone else experienced this, and if so, any suggestions?

Thanks!

How many Products are on your site?

Have you an URL that we can peek at?

What version of Zen Cart?

Clean install or an Upgrade?

How did you install it?

How did you upgrade it?

Any Add-ons?

How many Products are on your site?
76

Have you an URL that we can peek at? http://darinland.com/BobbyShop/

What version of Zen Cart?
Most recent version

Clean install or an Upgrade?
Clean install

How did you install it?
According to the install instructions on the ZenCart site

How did you upgrade it?
N/A

Any Add-ons?
No

Thanks!

--Michael

Ajeh:

How many Products are on your site?

Have you an URL that we can peek at?

What version of Zen Cart?

Clean install or an Upgrade?

How did you install it?

How did you upgrade it?

Any Add-ons?

DarinLand:

What version of Zen Cart?
Most recent versionDoes that mean v1.3.7 ?
or v1.3.7.1 ?
or the most recent version available at the time when you downloaded it ? if so, what date did you download it ?

v1.3.7

When I clicked "check for updates" in my ZenCart Admin today, I got the message "Your version of Zen Cart™ appears to be current," so I was not aware there was another version after 1.3.7

DrByte:

Does that mean v1.3.7 ?
or v1.3.7.1 ?
or the most recent version available at the time when you downloaded it ? if so, what date did you download it ?

Anyone have any thoughts on my issue? It doesn't seem to be going away--right now my site is frozen again, not loading up after I've deactivated 4 specials. I can't get back in to activate new specials, and my site comes up as "cannot find server". This happens every time I try to activate or deactivate specials.

DarinLand:

v1.3.7

When I clicked "check for updates" in my ZenCart Admin today, I got the message "Your version of Zen Cart™ appears to be current," so I was not aware there was another version after 1.3.7

What is your server's errorlog saying when your "freezing up" or "site goes down" situations happen?

Currently (right after the situation when the site went down while trying to activate specials) it says:

"Your error log is empty."

DrByte:

What is your server's errorlog saying when your "freezing up" or "site goes down" situations happen?

"cannot find server" messages suggest that the webserver service has crashed or cannot be reached.

Have you talked to your hosting company to confirm whether something you're doing is actually resetting the webserver services (ie: apache) ?

As far as Zen Cart is concerned, updating specials simply flips a few database fields. It's not a server-intensive process.

Can you trigger the problem consistently ? ie: every time you update specials ?
If you can trigger it on-demand, try running a database-repair (phpMyAdmin) on all your tables, and test again.

What happens if you install a fresh uncustomized copy of Zen Cart in another folder and database, perhaps with demo products, and try changing specials in the same manner as you've been doing ? Does it crash things then too ? If so, there's something amuck on your server. If not, then there's something amuck in your existing ZC setup ... perhaps files or data ... uncertain at this point.

Apparently, my host clears error logs every 24 hours, and it took a while for the log entries pertaining to my recent issues to show up.

Here they are:

[Fri Aug 31 08:39:54 2007] [error] [client 207.38.5.178] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/posting.php
[Fri Aug 31 08:40:08 2007] [error] [client 83.176.204.32] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/viewforum.php
[Fri Aug 31 08:40:57 2007] [error] [client 69.92.179.101] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/index.php
[Fri Aug 31 08:41:04 2007] [error] [client 69.92.179.101] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/index.php
[Fri Aug 31 08:41:15 2007] [error] [client 69.92.179.101] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/index.php
[Fri Aug 31 08:41:27 2007] [error] [client 69.92.179.101] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/index.php

To answer your question, yes, I can trigger the problem consistently. It happens every time I try to activate or deactivate specials--every time, without fail, it happens on the 2nd or 3rd special being activated or deactivated. And it only happens when I'm doing this, so clearly it is this action that is triggering the problem, whatever it might be.

I doubt there's any problem with my install, since absolutely nothing unusual was done during the install process--it was installed step by step according to ZenCart instructions.

I am also not doing anything out of the ordinary that would trigger the problem. I am simply using the admin functions as they were intended, as they have been designed.

I'll try that database-repair you suggest...

DrByte:

"cannot find server" messages suggest that the webserver service has crashed or cannot be reached.

Have you talked to your hosting company to confirm whether something you're doing is actually resetting the webserver services (ie: apache) ?

As far as Zen Cart is concerned, updating specials simply flips a few database fields. It's not a server-intensive process.

Can you trigger the problem consistently ? ie: every time you update specials ?
If you can trigger it on-demand, try running a database-repair (phpMyAdmin) on all your tables, and test again.

What happens if you install a fresh uncustomized copy of Zen Cart in another folder and database, perhaps with demo products, and try changing specials in the same manner as you've been doing ? Does it crash things then too ? If so, there's something amuck on your server. If not, then there's something amuck in your existing ZC setup ... perhaps files or data ... uncertain at this point.

Can you give me instructions on how to run a database-repair? I went to my hosting panel and thought it would be self-evident, but I can't seem to find any info there about how to do this.

Thanks!

DarinLand:

Apparently, my host clears error logs every 24 hours, and it took a while for the log entries pertaining to my recent issues to show up.

Here they are:

[Fri Aug 31 08:39:54 2007] [error] [client 207.38.5.178] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/posting.php
[Fri Aug 31 08:40:08 2007] [error] [client 83.176.204.32] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/viewforum.php
[Fri Aug 31 08:40:57 2007] [error] [client 69.92.179.101] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/index.php
[Fri Aug 31 08:41:04 2007] [error] [client 69.92.179.101] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/index.php
[Fri Aug 31 08:41:15 2007] [error] [client 69.92.179.101] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/index.php
[Fri Aug 31 08:41:27 2007] [error] [client 69.92.179.101] (2)No such file or directory: File does not exist: /var/chroot/home/content/d/a/r/darinland1/html/index.php

To answer your question, yes, I can trigger the problem consistently. It happens every time I try to activate or deactivate specials--every time, without fail, it happens on the 2nd or 3rd special being activated or deactivated. And it only happens when I'm doing this, so clearly it is this action that is triggering the problem, whatever it might be.

I doubt there's any problem with my install, since absolutely nothing unusual was done during the install process--it was installed step by step according to ZenCart instructions.

I am also not doing anything out of the ordinary that would trigger the problem. I am simply using the admin functions as they were intended, as they have been designed.

I'll try that database-repair you suggest...

Is your host running cpanel ?
If so, go to MySQL Databases, find your database in the list, and click Repair.

If not, go to phpmyadmin, and click on a table, choose Operations, then Repair. Repeat for each table.