alexiskb has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: FILE NOT FOUND 404 error - INTERMITANT
by boo_radley (Parson) on Feb 26, 2001 at 18:53 UTC
    hmm.
    you could :
    1. check your web server's log files. You don't say what flavor server you're using, but it might be possible to log the url that generates this error.
    2. whomp up a little LWP::Useragent script to hit the page and redirect repeatedly, and alert you when such an error occurs.
    3. uh,use strict;
    4. if your users are in the same building/town/area as you, have one of them call you when the error occurs. then run! to them, and view the error for yourself.
    obviously, I must advocate the middle two for their Obperlishness, but the first and the last have their own piquant qualities as well.
(ar0n: css?) Re: FILE NOT FOUND 404 error - INTERMITANT
by ar0n (Priest) on Feb 26, 2001 at 19:25 UTC
    Are you, by any chance, using stylesheets in your results page?

    I've found that certain browsers (NS 4.76 on linux) show a 404 when the stylesheets aren't found.

    PS. It's "intermittent"

    [ar0n]

Re: FILE NOT FOUND 404 error - INTERMITANT
by unixwzrd (Beadle) on Feb 26, 2001 at 19:32 UTC
    What everyone else said, and a couple of other things.

    You should check the permissions on *every* directory up to the root, if you haven't already.

    Another thing I find useful when I'm ripping my hair out, is and this works only if you have root access to the machine, is to run strace on the web server on Linux. On Solaris, use truss.

    The command would be:

    strace -f apachectl start or truss -f apachectl start
    This may produce a lot of output, so you can redirect the output to to a logfile.

    Update: jeffa suggested I mention redirecting STDERR, but you don't have to do that, you can use the "-o" option to direct the trace output to a logfile. "-o logfilename" works with both strace and truss.

    One can then use less or tail -f to look at the logfile. STDERR and STDOUT will then appear with the running process as usual.

    This method of testing works equally well for any script you might write in addition to CGI.

    Another cool option is using "-p" to attach to a running process.

    Mike - mps@discomsys.com

    "The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen... and stupidity."
    Harlan Ellison

Re: FILE NOT FOUND 404 error - INTERMITANT
by arturo (Vicar) on Feb 26, 2001 at 20:11 UTC

    It's odd, unless the refresh URL points to a file (or the file includes a CSS doc) that is only intermittently there. What you *might* do is have the script that generates the refresh tag verify that the file at the end of the URL in the tag is there. This is imperfect for a number of reasons (only easy test is the -e filetest operator, which you can only use if the URL is on the a filesystem accessible to the machine the script's running on) , and if the file is only intermittently there, it might be gone by the time the refresh takes effect.

    but you might cut down on the number of 404s this way.

    Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor

Re: FILE NOT FOUND 404 error - INTERMITANT
by stefan k (Curate) on Feb 26, 2001 at 17:02 UTC
    maybe you should ask the error reporters to tell you the whole URL that can not be found. I could imagine that you "calculate" the URL of the resultspage and have an error there...

    just a guess...

    Regards Stefan K

      Thank you, i found out it was because we are using thhtpd -- thttpd - tiny/turbo/throttling HTTP server and it was being wierd....