White Page - cannot access site

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 5:27 am

Would appreciate some advice please. My site was performing well until last Friday when I attempted to open it to check on a maintenance item and faced a “white screen” result. In 5 years of operation this is a first for me however on checking around I find that it is not an uncommon occurrence although the causes seem to vary from one situation to another.
The only recent changes have been a Joomla update to 3.9.10 and one for the JCE extension. Also in recent weeks we were obliged to connect to a new wireless hub and NBN (National Broadband Network) modem which has seen a few anomalies occur!
If I am reading the description of ‘white page’ instances correctly on Mr Google I am assuming that the site in question presents a ‘white page ‘ to all who attempt to access .... is this correct?
I can access my site via a mobile phone and other off site computers can access it confirming what appears to be normal site operation however the 2 desktops and one laptop at my location use the aforementioned NBN access point and all exhibit a ‘white screen’ i.e., no access to the site. If I attempt to access the Administrator page I get a ‘white page’ with a “404” error and no access. The host provider confirms that the site is working as expected at their location.
Helpful suggestions would be appreciated. Cheers Rod

Post by **toivo** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 8:44 am

If you can access the website via your mobile phone while using a mobile rather than WiFi connection, it looks like something in your NBN connection interferes with the connection, as you suspect.

It sounds like your modem router is using a firewall application with strict security rules that clobber particular types of HTTP requests. Your ISP should have all the details of the configuration. On the other hand, the issue could be a combination of requests from the NBN connection and the web server security application used by your ISP.

Can you access other websites normally through the NBN connection?

What is the URL of your site?

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 10:21 am

Thank you much for the prompt response. Yes I seem to have open access to other sites per what you would consider as normal operation. I did this site for a community, not for profit group .... www.countryparadiseparklands.com.au. Strangely enough I was checking out some information since last Friday and came across a similar 'white screen' result at [ redacted ]. Back to you....cheers....Rod

Post by **toivo** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 10:56 am

The second URL leads to a site that seems to have been hacked because the HTML source of the white page contained links to five sites selling [spam], all probably fake.

Does the PHP error log of your site contain PHP fatal errors when you get the white page? That is quite important because it can point to the root cause of this issue.

Please post the results of Forum Post Assistant (FPA) by following the instructions from https://forumpostassistant.github.io/docs/.

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 12:47 pm

Thanks. On my list of things to do on the morrow. Will post results. Second 'dud' link came from a UK Military vehicle restoration forum. Can't take anything on face value these days. Cheers.... Rod

Post by **toivo** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 1:05 pm

Happens to the best of us. As you saw from my previous post, the common word I used for bags that ladies carry was replaced by the word censor of this forum.

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 5:38 am

Afternoon Toivo. Well that exercise was interesting and I think the waters are a little murkier. Changed the config error reporting to maximum in public.html, saved and closed. Whilst in public.html I noticed that the error log was a rather large 272M. Culprit is the JEvent item following which started September last year. Have sent them a note re this and another one further below. Error log to be corrected also.

Extract: [24-Jul-2019 13:38:40 Australia/Brisbane] PHP Warning: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable in /home/countryp/public_html/plugins/jevents/jevfiles/jevfiles.php on line 1218.

The change to error checking brought the following out of the woodwork....
[24-Jul-2019 03:40:24 UTC] PHP Deprecated: Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP; plgSystemCompleteImageStyles has a deprecated constructor in /home/countryp/public_html/plugins/system/completeimagestyles/completeimagestyles.php on line 19.

[24-Jul-2019 13:40:24 Australia/Brisbane] PHP Notice: A non well formed numeric value encountered in /home/countryp/public_html/templates/joomspirit_126/index.php on line 441.

[24-Jul-2019 13:41:23 Australia/Brisbane] PHP Notice: Only variables should be assigned by reference in /home/countryp/public_html/modules/mod_jevents_legend/tmpl/flatplus/legend.php on line 164.

There is an interesting log in C Panel I will add later. Look forward to your input. Cheers.... Rod

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 5:44 am

Toivo I just retrieved the C Panel error screen shot.... Rod
2019-07-24 15:12:37.367699 [INFO] [175722] [66.249.79.172:58219] File not found [/home/countryp/public_html/404.shtml]
2019-07-24 14:45:15.741092 [INFO] [175722] [77.75.79.11:33248] File not found [/home/countryp/public_html/countryparadiseparkland.com/404.shtml]
2019-07-24 14:45:15.741042 [INFO] [175722] [77.75.79.11:33248] File not found [/home/countryp/public_html/countryparadiseparkland.com/robots.txt]
2019-07-24 14:31:48.612111 [INFO] [175722] [40.77.167.21:9768] File not found [/home/countryp/public_html/countryparadiseparkland.com/404.shtml]
2019-07-24 14:31:48.612065 [INFO] [175722] [40.77.167.21:9768] File not found [/home/countryp/public_html/countryparadiseparkland.com/robots.txt]
2019-07-24 14:31:22.325379 [INFO] [175722] [157.55.39.1:22998] File not found [/home/countryp/public_html/countryparadiseparkland.com/404.shtml]
2019-07-24 14:31:22.325341 [INFO] [175722] [157.55.39.1:22998] File not found [/home/countryp/public_html/countryparadiseparkland.com/robots.txt]
2019-07-24 14:25:24.315174 [INFO] [175722] [34.74.75.82:51427] File not found [/home/countryp/public_html/countryparadiseparkland.com/404.shtml]
2019-07-24 14:25:24.315138 [INFO] [175722] [34.74.75.82:51427] File not found [/home/countryp/public_html/countryparadiseparkland.com/robots.txt]
2019-07-24 14:25:24.050998 [INFO] [175722] [66.249.79.66:57825] File not found [/home/countryp/public_html/countryparadiseparkland.com/404.shtml]

Post by **toivo** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 4:08 pm

The PHP Deprecated error shows that your version of the paid plugin Complete Image Styles must be out of date. According to the JED entry, version 2.2.0 was published on Feb 25, 2018 and it has also been tested in Joomla 4 alpha: https://extensions.joomla.org/extension ... ge-styles/.

The PHP notice from your JoomSpirit template can be easily filtered by lowering the level of error reporting in Global Configuration to 'Simple' or 'None'. The selection 'None' also filters PHP warnings and actually all errors.

The second lot of 'File not found' messages complain about the missing 404 page. The following tutorial shows how to create a custom 404 error page: https://docs.joomla.org/Creating_a_Cust ... Error_Page.

It would still be useful to attach the output from the FPA because others may have comments about the versions of third party extensions and the configuration in general.

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Thu Jul 25, 2019 3:36 am

Thanks again Toivo. Have sent notes to both extension vendors and will act on same as soon as I receive a result. Not having to ever use the FPA aspect I shall now improve my education and check out the link above that you kindly provided. As I still cannot access the live site from here I trust that the back up localhost copy will suffice as an information source. Cheers..... Rod

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Thu Jul 25, 2019 3:44 am

Toivo forget my last sentence above. Having had a quick read of the Fast Start I now understand (in my current situation) that it requires a file download and then an ISP, C Panel access to the web root directory for the site etc. etc. Need to study this further. Cheers..... Rod

Post by **toivo** » Thu Jul 25, 2019 5:01 am

Please note that you can run the FPA as long as you can upload it to the Joomla folder. It is not a Joomla extension, just a PHP script.

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 3:44 am

Good afternoon Toivo. Following on from the above conversation I uploaded the fpa script to the web root folder however it came down to a not unexpected, negative result i.e., when I attempted to activate it I received a 404 error ... Not found etc. The only change was to add the country code per the following - https://www.countryparadiseparklands.com.au/fpa-en.php. When I inherited the site to rework same on behalf of the owners the Domain name was already registered with a company that has commercial links with my current comms/NBN supplier. It was too messy to move at the time however the actual Joomla site is was a different proposition and it is hosted by a totally separate provider. Won't bother with the details. Clutching at straws but logic seems to keep coming back to the new connection/modem/router etc set up? Any further thoughts? Cheers.... Rod

Post by **toivo** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 6:40 am

You must have uploaded the FPA script to a different folder, not to the Joomla root folder.

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 6:54 am

Mate thanks for the quick response. I followed the instructions below. Please advise what I am missing??
"Joomla! is installed in your web-root folder and you installed the English version of the FPA script:
Upload the fpa-en.php script to: <your-domain-name.com>/public_html/
To run the script: http://www.<your-domain-name>.com/fpa-en.php
Cheers

Post by **toivo** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 7:23 am

Is Joomla installed in that folder? Which application did you use to upload fpa-en.php?

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 1:04 pm

Good evening Toivo. After accessing the File Manager in c Panel on the host server I selected the public_html folder then the 'upload' menu item, selected the fpa file and it was uploaded and yes that is where Joomla is installed. Cheers... Rod

Post by **toivo** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 2:41 pm

It could be a permissions issue. The File Manager may have an option to change the permissions and the owner of the file fpa-en.php to be exactly the same as Joomla files have.

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Fri Aug 02, 2019 3:52 am

Thanks again toivo. Problem fixed. Re recent NBN setup. Two fellows arrive. They reroute coax, put 2 boxes in a convenient position, connect and test operation. A telstra smart modem and an NBN connection in this case. Worked fine for a couple of months and stopped (single instance) as explained above. Cannot get a definitive answer re the reason for the problem BUT the modem Lan setting (IPv4 DNS -Telstra) was turned on plus the IPv6 State was ON. Select this second switch to OFF, back out and recycle the web connection and voila access to said web site was achieved. Three different contacts with provider to get to this. Trust this may help others down under. Cheers

Post by **toivo** » Fri Aug 02, 2019 6:42 pm

That is an interesting finding about IPv6 or its implementation!

sozzled · Post by **sozzled** » Fri Aug 02, 2019 8:25 pm

mercury wrote: ↑
Fri Aug 02, 2019 3:52 am
[Not necessarily a] definitive answer re the reason for the problem BUT the modem Lan setting (IPv4 DNS -Telstra) was turned on plus the IPv6 State was ON. Select this second switch to OFF, back out and recycle the web connection and voilà ...

Very interesting! More dark tales about the nbn™ (or, more specifically, Telstra's operations with it).

I had a quick look at my ISP-provided modem (not Telstra, BTW) and it has both IPv4 and IPv6 and I don't have these issues. Curious to know if the connection in the OP's case is FTTP, FTTC, FTTN or HFC (but it sounds like it's the last-mentioned of these). I had a quick look on Whirlpool for news about Telstra HFC which didn't turn up much but the general buzz is that it's a bit "iffy". I'm not even sure if HFC is still being rolled out by NBN Co.

@Moderators: please relocate this topic to "The Lounge"

mercury · Post by **mercury** » Sat Aug 03, 2019 1:28 am

Thanks for the additional input however the in depth technical aspects of the connection are above my pay grade. I did note in the advanced settings that other menu locations exhibited IPv6 as turned 'ON'. Having recently signed up to their support services, I granted their rep remote access to the modem and he changed the IPv6 setting to off which apparently cured my particular access problem however he could not tell me why. Obviously the problem is known about in some quarters (first two contacts didn't) and something that has been introduced recently I would guess. May be incorrect but it seems like good business to manifest a problem and then get consulted re the 'fix'. Rod

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