New PhpBB administrator questions

[bbad]

Hello,

I've recently become partially responsible for a Phpbb forum and am in the process of running some maintenance. During this time, I've noticed that one of the log files is loaded with "File not found" errors of which are being generated by various IP addresses. A cut and paste of the most recent errors are below. Anyone have any ideas as to what this problem is? Or is it a problem at all?

[Fri Jan 21 21:18:30 2011] [error] [client 66.249.71.207] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/http:
[Fri Jan 21 20:46:51 2011] [error] [client 64.255.180.185] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/images/avatars/gallery/gallery, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/marital-ra ... 50-15.html
[Fri Jan 21 19:17:36 2011] [error] [client 98.243.33.66] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.google.com/search?client=fir ... gle+Search
[Fri Jan 21 19:17:34 2011] [error] [client 174.253.186.242] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/post-your- ... -2340.html
[Fri Jan 21 19:17:32 2011] [error] [client 94.76.204.102] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://google.com
[Fri Jan 21 19:17:01 2011] [error] [client 94.142.131.20] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/weblog.php ... &year=2010
[Fri Jan 21 19:16:33 2011] [error] [client 174.253.186.242] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/post-your- ... -2340.html
[Fri Jan 21 19:16:33 2011] [error] [client 64.255.164.122] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml
[Fri Jan 21 19:16:09 2011] [error] [client 207.46.13.54] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:56 2011] [error] [client 204.111.168.176] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:47 2011] [error] [client 204.111.168.176] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:37 2011] [error] [client 70.112.172.57] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:35 2011] [error] [client 174.253.186.242] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/post-your- ... -2340.html
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:34 2011] [error] [client 174.253.186.242] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/post-your- ... -2340.html
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:32 2011] [error] [client 24.255.199.207] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/islam-f20.html
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:31 2011] [error] [client 195.191.54.216] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/weblog.php ... &year=2010
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:28 2011] [error] [client 109.230.251.233] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:25 2011] [error] [client 124.121.2.193] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:21 2011] [error] [client 98.243.33.66] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.google.com/search?client=fir ... gle+Search
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:21 2011] [error] [client 24.255.199.207] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/islam-f20.html
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:20 2011] [error] [client 98.243.33.66] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.google.com/search?client=fir ... gle+Search
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:14 2011] [error] [client 77.88.29.248] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:10 2011] [error] [client 202.139.24.222] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/post-your- ... t2527.html
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:08 2011] [error] [client 109.230.251.233] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.atheistforums.com/
[Fri Jan 21 19:15:08 2011] [error] [client 98.243.33.66] File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://www.google.com/search?client=fir ... gle+Search

[Thoul]

The "File does not exist: /home/infidelg/public_html/500.shtml" errors just mean you don't have a custom error page for handling internal server errors. You could create a 500.shtml page to handle those and prevent this from filling up the log.

The "/images/avatars/gallery/gallery" seems to be a reference to a blank.gif file. I would assume there is a default avatar feature of some kind installed, but it's using a wrong path to load the blank.gif file.

[bbad]

Thoul,

I really appreciate your help in identifying these issues. I hope to learn enough in the coming months as administrator to hopefully return the favor whithin this forum.

Additionally, our hosting provider has stated that we are too much of a pain basically. We are going to have to move in turn meaning that we will probably want to move to the new forum software 3.x . I expect that it will be quite a bit of work to make this move? I know our current phpbb software runs under php 4 and our provider says he won't support it after the end of february so we will have to upgrade since phpbb 2 won't run under version 5?

[Thoul]

phpBB 2 will run fine on PHP 5. I'm not sure what sort of modifications are installed on your forum, so I can't say how much work will be involved in an upgrade to phpBB 3.x. Probably a lot, though.

[bbad]

I have another question for you if you don't mind.

When we post to the forum, probably 30% of the time, the browser just sits and acts as though it is doing something (progress bar doesn't move past 3 or 4). The browser doesn't hang but it can take up to 5 minutes to come back and say that your post was sucessful.

However, during this time, I can open another browser session and go check where I posted, within seconds, and the post is there. The posting browser does usually come back but sometimes it's minutes later.

Is this a known issue that has a fix to resolve it?

I'm thinking maybe it has something to do with the db configuration. I posted screen shots of the db status on another post:

http://www.phpbbhacks.com/forums/phpbb- ... 77719.html

This is one variable returned from our DB that suggests that it is maybe related to a db efficiency issue?

regHandler_read_rnd_next = 2,345.76 M - The number of requests to read the next row in the data file. This is high if you are doing a lot of table scans. Generally this suggests that your tables are not properly indexed or that your queries are not written to take advantage of the indexes you have. arding versioning?

[Thoul]

It's not an issue I can recall of hearing before, so I can't recommend a specific fix. I would say there is definitely something that needs to be optimized, but I can't say what without seeing the code of the posting.php and includes/functions_posting.php files. There are many modifications that edit the posting process to add additional queries after the post is saved in the database. One of those could be the culprit.

Since you seem to be dealing with a fairly large board, a glance at this old topic about tweaks for those might prove helpful:
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... 8&t=135383
It's a very long topic, though.