Impossible to login to PHPMyadmin - and other Apache sites

Connecting - I mean

• web sites have public and private access - The user that logs in get "connected"

Working correctly:

• anonymous visitors can browse the web site
• logged in users can also browse and pubish content

The problem

• there is no way to log in once "disconnected" or logged out. I cannot login anymore to any web site
• specifically, it is not possible to login to phpMyAdmin - the main page displays correctly, but nothing happens when submitting username and password - exactly like all web sites
• no error log nor access information in apache2 logs.

Clearer?

Thank you very much for taking care

I tried with IE, FF and Chrome, cleared the caches and so on - same thing. It works correctly with another quite similar server

Any place I should look for to solve this critical issue?

I did not ask other users, I tried from different computers from home, same behaviour It looks like mysql is never hit "directly" by my web sites. I even change the database name of one site, it still worked!

There are no error at all, the access log stopped recording anything since yesterday I suspect some cache to bypass all requests from Apache

After further research, I actually get Apache access info, but not when tryiong to login, and not for certain actions (like asking for a new password)

Only one site could have get soe login attempts today, but not sure. Also, they would normally not need to login again as their session is saved.

I of course restarted Apache, MySQL, and even the server several times. I tried to kill all possible caches with no more success.

Your suggestion about my ISP might be worth exploring, because this is really puzzling

Good idea However, I cannot create a dummy user to let you connect to the web site. But you can at least try these 2 phpMyAdmin installed by VM on 2 different servers

entering any (wrong) login should warn "#xxx Cannot log in to the MySQL server"

1- http://b2mml-services.com/phpmyadmin/

2- http://shareontheweb.com/phpmyadmin1/

On my side:

(1) behave correctly on this server

(2) keep silent on the faulty server.

Also I created a user vmt/vmt that has permission for a useless database "cases" - you should be abale to connect to http://shareontheweb.com/phpmyadmin1 using this login

Thanks a lot

Locutus:

• yes, the "1" in http://shareontheweb.com/phpmyadmin1/ is correct

• phpMyAdmin was installed using VM script installer in both cases. I tried to reinstall several times, it proceeds normally. It used to work, but not anymore

• I checked the session.save_path issue, tried several configs. What I found is that the directory was empty, but 300K size. I deleted the directory and rcreated it, I also changed the location of this path, but without any effect after restarting Apache, and even rebooting the server.

andreychek:

Every app I need to login through Apache / php fails. I can connect to VM without problem, but cannot do anything with my web sites runing Apache / php, including phpMyAdmin as discussed just above. The sites I am logged in keep as is until I log out - then I have no way to login anymore.

Looking at both servers PHP information, I found that: checking phpinfo on the phpMyAdmin welcome screen, the variable HTTP_COOKIE contents this:

1) failing server

phpMyAdmin unlogged SESS9e15b58ce905bc905f72910fd9ae69ab=6c4f07f435d9c90241f164a3838e9dd0; has_js=1; __utma=73559177.1425389158.1312879513.1312879513.1312879513.1; __utmb=73559177.2.10.1312879513; __utmc=73559177; __utmz=73559177.1312879513.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)

Another web site unlogged SESS9e15b58ce905bc905f72910fd9ae69ab=6c4f07f435d9c90241f164a3838e9dd0; has_js=1; __utma=73559177.1425389158.1312879513.1312879513.1312879513.1; __utmb=73559177.2.10.1312879513; __utmc=73559177; __utmz=73559177.1312879513.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)

(all my sites are unlogged now, as I emtied my browsers' caches :()

2) correct server

phpMyAdmin unlogged phpMyAdmin=hrf0t84o0m545lp7b22g25hv1h28g5hi; pma_lang=en; pma_collation_connection=utf8_general_ci; pma_mcrypt_iv=iyD0j%2BI9cVw%3D

phpmyadmin logged phpMyAdmin=g0l517u3kdg01ogtqo9o322th49is5r3; pma_lang=en; pma_collation_connection=utf8_general_ci; pma_mcrypt_iv=iyD0j%2BI9cVw%3D; pmaUser-1=vDlyo%2BCmVWk%3D; pmaPass-1=U1fA7eleX6o%3D; has_js=1; SESS384300a1104195dd3b58ab2f046bb319=3L6xB2QzMjVoZhwoVrxTosP3FKdO4y55rC_9lRvf0dE; Drupal.toolbar.collapsed=0

Another web site unlogged has_js=1

the same, logged has_js=1; SESS384300a1104195dd3b58ab2f046bb319=3L6xB2QzMjVoZhwoVrxTosP3FKdO4y55rC_9lRvf0dE; Drupal.toolbar.collapsed=0

???

They both were installed by Webmin / Virtualmin, though the failing one was updated with dotdeb for upgrading Mysql to 5.1 - php upgraded to 5.2.17 at this moment.

Apart of phpinfo,

1- http://b2mml-services.com/phpinfo.php

2- http://shareontheweb.com/phpinfo.php

what should I look for?

thanks again

Yes, I can connect to Mysql without any problem The last things I remember before I noticed the change was:

• a Drupal script running to update the translations that failed by lack of php memory - I then increased from 1G to 2G (I reverted back since then)

• installing a Drupal forked module that seemed buggy - I removed it later on

• I also made intensive performance testing (http://www.webpagetest.org/) that put some stress on the system

• My disk system partition went full during performance tests with XHProf (I changeed the output directory somewer under home/ after

I just finnished checking my phpinfo Not much to say though - the mysql client version does not match the mysql server's (this is intentionnal and not an issue according to dotdeb)

• the cookies behave very differently:

when on the phpadmin login page, - an unlog site generates no cookie on the "good server", - the "bad one" sends cookies

I look at the logs, this is what I get when I attempt to logon on both servers

Good

Web site www.b2mml-services.com

Phpmyadmin

BAD

web site "www.shareontheweb.com"

80.15.104.74 - apc [09/Aug/2011:20:15:26 +0200] "POST /user HTTP/1.1" 200 2550 "http://www.shareontheweb.com/user" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/13.0.782.107 Safari/535.1

phpMyAdmin

(fail to logon)

Note1: I am wondering why "apc" appears just before the timestamp in "BAD".

Note2: apc.php mini-sites works normally - it does not rely on Mysql for login http://www.shareontheweb.com/apc

Yes, I use APC. I set apc-enable = 0, but still get this when attempting a (still failing) logon

With APC disabled, the sites become incredibly slow, and the cpu goes near 100%

No, I still can't login. I get rid of APC and get the server working fine without it.

This is what I get in VM access log for the site I am trying to log in

No get in return as I should - below a "normal" access log for a login action

1) Looking at the processes, I noticed that MySQL was not running the same way in both servers:

In bad, the process is

by mysql/mysql

its parent is /bin/sh /usr/bin/mysqld_safe by root / root

its parent is init [2]

in Good, the process is /usr/sbin/mysqld by mysql/mysql

its parent is /sbin/init by root/root

2) I don't see anything in any logs.

3) I have checked everything reported by phpinfo

The only different thing is the cookies generated from the login attempt which is quite big in Bad, most of the time iniexistent in Good

4) I checked Apache over and over again, can't see anything

May be I should consider reinstalling Apache? How could I do that without losing my parameters and Virtualmin control?

Just an observation:

It looks like any HTTP GET request is correctly honnored, while POST requests are received by Apache but not further processed. That might be Apache or PHP doing nothing when receiving a POST request

Problem solved:

I really don't know how this occurred, but the php variable max_post_size was configured to 2G, but did not behave accordingly. Instead of making php accepting 2 Gig post requests, it made it accept only negative values!

I got this kind warning: [Thu Aug 11 17:04:28 2011] [error] [client 80.15.104.74] PHP Warning: Unknown: POST Content-Length of 177 bytes exceeds the limit of -2147483648 bytes in Unknown on line 0, referer: http://web2.see.asso.fr/admin/settings/performance/authcache

This use to work before, it is very strange that it stopped interpreting correctly this value. The main problem was that I never got this warning before I tweaked php.ini to record errors: by defaut, php do not log anything...

Once I got the message, it was a matter og minute to sovle it... changing 2G by 2000M...

Thank you again very much for your care in this really tricky case!

I wish no limit to post large files (HD videos for example) , I was advised to set this variable at least the value set for file uploads.

Yes, you are certainly true, and I probably don't need to set this that high. I don't know exactly how Drupal (my main applications framework) handles file uploads, they are probably smart.