Some ideas off the top of my head, prolly not worth too much...
Is the script in mod_perl? I don't know mod_perl but from what I understand there is caching involved.
Is there a high load on the machine, or a really high http timeout setting? Perhaps it actually took an hour for those two instances to complete.
Are you sure there's only one copy? The users don't have bookmarks pointing to the old one or anything?
Is the script on a cluster of machines maybe?
john | [reply] |
Is the script in mod_perl? No.
Is there a high load on the machine? Can't be sure. It's shared with other sites. My site has light traffic.
or a really high http timeout setting? Not sure that's relevent, since this was a new session for the recorded client.
Perhaps it actually took an hour for those two instances to complete. Not likely. They were consecutive, about 55 seconds apart, and from the same client.
Are you sure there's only one copy? Yes, this particular script has only ever had one name and one location. When I FTP changes, I overwrite the old copy.
Is the script on a cluster of machines maybe? Not according to my hosting service.
One other odd observation: After the two anomalous queries,
the same client made nine further queries which logged normal
responses.
| [reply] |
Even if the script is written as vanilla CGI, if it's being
run on apache with mod_perl, there are a couple ways that
it could be set up to optimize performance by caching CGI
scripts to avoid having to reload and recompile them every
time they're referenced.
By default, apache request-handling
processes kill themselves after handling 50 requests, at
which point their cached data is lost and the replacement
process reloads everything. I suspect that the two anomalous
log entries were the result of a process which had previously
handled requests for your old script and didn't notice that
there was a new version. By now, though, it is long dead
and you shouldn't see any artifacts of the old version in the
future.
| [reply] |
It's a kind of magic, usual thing in this world :)
I can imagine that those two queries were made via an older version of your query form which was cached in clients browsers and you mistook data in new format but submitted via an older form for data in old format. | [reply] |
Dear Monks,
I owe you all a huge apology for wasting your time with
this one. It turns out that the "anomalous" queries were coming
in the back door via an HTML form and an an entirely
different script that were obsoleted a year ago, yet which
functioned so nearly like the prior version of the new one I
couldn't tell them apart. Yes, I should have deleted the old
script. Yes, I should have directed the old HTML form to the new
script. Yes, I should write version information in my log file.
I know, I know. And I promise to say 256 "Hail, Larry's"
and never do it again.
Your humble penitent servant,
Dr. Mu | [reply] |