Thread

Yep- the character jamming it is $1, but I’m not dead sure where it’s being set.  Is it happening on all pages?  Consistently and across browsers?  Derek suggested a more in-depth debug approach here.  Might give that a try- should give us a better hint.

Make sense?

Ok, I think I did exactly what he suggested.  In core.input.php I changed line 410 from

exit('Disallowed Key Characters');

to

$trace = debug_backtrace();
print_r($trace);
exit('Disallowed Key Characters');

Now, instead of getting

Disallowed Key Characters$1

I get a completely blank page with no source code to view.

Does this tell us something, or am I not following his instructions properly?

Thanks!

Could this possibly have anything to do with the hosting company?  I do not know much about them and don’t have much access to working with the hosting, but the company said that they don’t have anything that is setting cookies, and my browser has no cookies displayed when I am having problems with the site.

It could be the server is setting something- server cookie perhaps.  I vaguely recall something quirky like that before.  I didn’t totally ‘get’ it at the time.

Hm- but the blank screen suggests a php error- may be some whitespace creeped in when you edited.  The basic edit looks ok to me.

Open up the system/index.php file and edit

error_reporting(0);

change to

error_reporting(E_ALL);

Get anything with that?

I changed the error reporting, and am still getting a blank screen.  Hmm?  Not sure?

What version of php are you running?  You can check in ‘Admin- Utilities- PHP info’.

PHP 4.2.3
MySQL 4.0.21

(I just tested with a php info file, I can’t log into any pages… they are all blank…)

Ah- that explains the backtrace- requires php 4.3.0 or better.  Let me bump this up to the dev crew, see if they have a better idea.

OK- while crew digs in, can you check a few things:
1. Check PHPInfo for display_errors, as well as your server error logs.

2. I know you mentioned this already, but can you double check if there’s anything on your server that sets cookies in the server environment?

Something else that you might try is to manually look through the cookies on your machine, to determine which one is setting the $1.  For instance, in Safari I can go to Settings, Security, View Cookies.

In Firefox, you can use the Web Developer extension to make that a bit easier. 

Are you able to locate it that way?

Also, can you provide a link to the site?

The weird thing is that I got the $1 with NO cookies set on my computer… at least that Firefox Developer toolbar was showing me.

I double checked with the hosting folks and they said that they are not doing anything… if it is shared hosting, could another site on the server be interfering?  That wouldn’t happen because you can’t send cookies across domains, right?

I am beginning to feel like I should suggest the client switch hosting providers…

I will go back no and double check for errors in the log.

Can you send a link my way? I want to see if I get the error.

I also wonder if they’re running some sort of accelerator or server caching system that is causing this issue. We can rule out a local issue by letting me test the site from here. =)

Sorry, I was unclear.  Can you remove the changes you made so it’s back to the default files? I want to see if I get the Disallowed Key Character error.

Thanks!

Ok, back up to the Disallow error message.

It seems that

$trace = debug_backtrace();
print_r($trace);

was making the screen go blank….

Yes, as Robin said, the backtrace was added in a PHP version after the one you have.

Ok, I don’t believe this is a cookie since I’m getting the Disallowed Key Character error as well.

Do you have a .htaccess file? If so, can you paste the contents, please?

Also, can you create a PHPInfo file and email the link to that file, so I can view it? Include the link to this thread, too, please, so I know what it is in reference to.

Thanks!