Latest revision as of 12:59, 18 December 2020

Cheetah Troubleshooter

If your web-server complies with Cheetah Hosting Requirements and you carefully followed al the steps described in Cheetah Installation Guide, your site should work just fine. In some (rare) cases, you may encounter a problem. In this document we gather the most common known issues and their possible solutions.

I see a blank page in the place of the page.

My page comes out gibberish. When I look at the source I see a lot of <?php ... ?> tags.

I've got "Internal error 500".

My security image doesn't show up on join form.

My image/sound/video uploads don't work.

Forum displays a blank page.

Some or all of my Flash apps keep on loading and do not work.

When I upload a video it always says "video is being processed".

Forum fails with this error message: [L[Site is unavailable]]

I have installed/created a new template for Cheetah and the Forum stopped to work.

I get "allowed memory size exhausted error".

I see a blank page in the place of the page.

Blank page usually means some PHP error. If display_errors option is turned off, then just blank page appears. You need to check PHP error log file for the exact error, or enable display_errors PHP setting - then instead of blank page you will see the error message. You maybe will need to ask your hosting support to change this setting. The error message will give you some clues about the source of the problem.

You can check your PHP setting in Cheetah Admin Panel > Tools > Host Tools > PHP Info

My page comes out gibberish. When I look at the source I see a lot of <?php ... ?> tags.

If the <?php ?> tags are being sent to the browser, it means your PHP is not working properly. All PHP code is supposed to be executed before the server sends the resulting HTML to your web browser. Make sure your web server meets the requirements to run Cheetah, that PHP is installed and configured properly, or contact your hosting provider or system administrator for assistance.

I've got "Internal error 500".

This is web-server error. You need to check web-server error log files for the exact error message, it will give you some clues about the source of the problem.

You maybe need to ask web hosting support to check error log files for you, since it maybe that you have no access to these files.

My security image doesn't show up on join form.

For Cheetah.1.x:

You need to generate your own reCaptcha keys and enter them in Cheetah Admin Panel > Settings > Advanced Settings > Security

For Cheetah.0.x and older:

Check if you have GD library installed and if it's compiled with Free Type fonts library. If GD library is not installed, you should install the latest version of ImageMagick and disable Use GD library for image processing in Admin panel -> Settings -> Advanced Settings.

My image/sound/video uploads don't work.

It maybe many reasons for this:

Incorrect permission - check Admin Panel > Tools > Host Tools > Permissions tab, for correct permissions everywhere
Upload limits - check Admin Panel > Tools > Host Tools > Audit tab, for post_max_size and upload_max_filesize settings
FFmpeg problems for sounds and video - check for correct permissions for ffmpeg in Permission tab and ffmpeg output in Site setup > ffmpeg in Audit tab in Admin Panel > Tools > Host Tools

Forum displays a blank page.

Check if PHP is compiled with XSLT support, it can be checked in Admin Panel > Tools > Host Tools > Audit and PHP info tabs.

Some or all of my Flash apps keep on loading and do not work.

1) This problem usually happens when there are writable permissions on folders and files when PHP is running in CGI mode.

To check the mode your PHP is running in, go to Admin Panel > Tools > Host Tools > Audit.

To check permissions, go to Admin Panel > Tools > Host Tools > Permissions.

2) This problem may also be caused by script's inability to open widgets' default skins. You can try the following tweak which will be harmless for the rest of the script functionality:

open the file flash/modules/MODULE_NAME/skins/index.php and replace the line

$sFile = $aResult['current'] . "." . $aResult['extension'];

with

$sFile = "default.swf";

You can also try to comment out these lines if you still experience the problem:

/* - comment start
require_once("../../../../inc/header.inc.php");
require_once($sIncPath . "functions.inc.php");
require_once($sIncPath . "apiFunctions.inc.php");
require_once($sIncPath . "xml.inc.php");

$aPathParts = explode("/", $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
$iPartsCount = count($aPathParts);
$aResult = getExtraFiles($aPathParts[$iPartsCount-3], $aPathParts[$iPartsCount-2]);
comment end - */

MODULE_NAME stands for board, chat, desktop, im, mp3, photo, video or video_comments.

When I upload a video it always says "video is being processed".

1) Check if the crons are installed and running properly. You can check your bug report email for messages from the crons and if they contain any errors.

2) Check if ffmpeg.exe is executable and produces any non-error output. This can be checked in Admin Panel > Tools > Host Tools > Audit | Permissions.

3) Check if H264 codec is enabled in "Admin Panel > Modules > Flash Apps > Video Player > Settings".

Forum fails with this error message: [L[Site is unavailable]]

When you insert javascript on Cheetah pages, this may result in Cheetah native javascript breaking.

To see what exactly is breaking the forum, you need to load the following URL in your browser:

forum/?debug=1

Usually, the problem is caused by these two lines inserted in some javascript ads and banners:

//<![CDATA[
//]]>

So, search for these lines in your javascript code and remove them.

I have installed/created a new template for Cheetah and the Forum stopped to work.

When you create or install a new template, you should consider that the same template should be created for the forum too.

Templates for Orca Forum should be placed in the folder modules/cheetah/forum/layout/ where you can find your default template uni and the base folder whose settings all other templates will inherit.

If you didn't create a template for Orca but you would like to use it with the default UNI template, you will need to tweak it:

rename the uni folder to your custom template's name, for example, if your template's folder name is called tmpl_cucu, rename the uni folder to cucu;

go to the cucu folder and open the file params.php;

rename all instances of the uni folder to cucu and save the file;

now you only need to go to Admin Panel -> Modules -> Orca Forum -> Manage Forum and recompile your languages.

I get "allowed memory size exhausted error".

This error comes from unsufficient PHP settings. I will show you how to change some PHP settings to prevent this kind of error and some other errors, too.

1) If PHP is running as an Apache module. Open the file ".htaccess" in Cheetah installation directory and add these at the very end of it:

php_flag allow_url_include Off
php_value upload_max_filesize 128M
php_value post_max_size 256M
php_value memory_limit 128M
php_value max_input_time 3000
php_value max_execution_time 3000
php_flag magic_quotes_gpc Off
php_flag short_open_tag On

2) If PHP is running as CGI or FastCGI application. Open the file "php.ini" in Cheetah installation directory or create a new one. Add these lines at the very end of the file:

magic_quotes_gpc = Off
safe_mode = Off
allow_url_include = Off
allow_url_fopen = On
register_globals = Off
upload_max_filesize = 128M
post_max_size = 256M
memory_limit = 128M
max_input_time = 3000
max_execution_time = 3000
short_open_tag = On

You need to place this file in every sub-directory of your Cheetah folder. This can be done by running the following command in your SSH shell:

cd cheetah_dir
find ./ -type d -exec cp php.ini {} \;
rm -rf ./flash/modules/*/skins/php.ini ./flash/modules/*/langs/php.ini ./modules/cheetah/forum/install/langs/php.ini ./modules/cheetah/forum/integrations/base/langs/php.ini

cheetah_dir should be replaced by the full path to Cheetah directory, for example "/home/user/public_html/"

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