Help! Site down for 24 hours and Jaguar is not helping

[modnar]

I made no changes to my site, yet my Joomla (installed using Jaguar's supplied Fantastico tool) links such as www.domain.org/content/blogcategory/22/61/ stopped working and instead return 404 errors. It's clear that some configuration must have changed on the server.

I opened a ticket almost 24 hours ago, and the level of help I've received is laughable. It was escalated to Level 2 a few hours ago, but I have not heard anything yet.

I've always been happy with JaguarPC support, but I'm somewhat shocked at my experience with this incident.

Does anyone have any tips on how I might be able to get this working?

Thanks!

[EastonRoyce]

Hi,

Maybe I might be asking a silly question here, but have you made any changes to your .htaccess files? Even changed the permissions perhaps? Things might be different now, but I remember when I used Joomla a while back, if you even looked at it's specialised .htaccess files the wrong way, the entire site would stuff up.

[EastonRoyce]

A few links that might help:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=76525
http://kb.siteground.com/article/404...und_error.html
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.ph...=0 &sk=t&sd=a
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=52295

Some suggest renaming the .htaccess file back to htaccess.txt or vice versa. Also, if possible, try disabling or enabling SEF (Search Engine Friendly) URLs.

Hope this helps.

[jason]

I don't know Joomla, but what you are describing sounds like an .htaccess problem to me. I'd first try copying the .htaccess from one of your backups (you do have backups, right? ) back to the site to see if that helps. If you don't have a current backup then perhaps you can restore it from the Joomla distro.

--Jason

[Ron]

It is possible if you did any work in CPanel that CPanel re-wrote your .htaccess file.

(I suppose it's possible that a master change to WHM/CPanel also made such a change, but finding that out from support would be hard)

I like the suggestion of at least comparing a backup .htaccess file to your current version, content and timestamp/permissions.

[Vin DSL]

I maintain a Joomla (test) install: http://joomla.lenon.com/

And, here's my htaccess file:

#####
# $Author: VinDSL (Lenon.com) $
# $Date: 2007/12/20 22:09:47  $
#####

# Use PHP5 as default
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php .php4 .php3 .phtml
# Use PHP5 as default
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5-source .php5s

##
# @version $Id: htaccess.txt 9317 2007-11-07 03:02:08Z jinx $
# @package Joomla
# @copyright Copyright (C) 2005 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved.
# @license http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU/GPL
# Joomla! is Free Software
##

##
# Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above.
##

Options +FollowSymLinks

##
# mod_rewrite in use
##

RewriteEngine On

##
# Uncomment following line if your webserver's URL
# is not directly related to physical file paths.
# Update YourJoomlaDirectory (just / for root)
#   ~Adversly Affects JaguarPC Forums Link~
##

# RewriteBase /

##
# SEF Rules
##

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/|.php|.html|.feed|.pdf|.raw|/[^.]*)$  [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) index.php
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L]

##
# This attempts to block the most common type of exploit 'attempts' to Joomla!
##

# Block out any script trying to set a mosConfig value through the URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|%3D) [OR]
# Block out any script trying to base64_encode crap to send via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode.*(.*) [OR]
# Block out any script that includes a <script> tag in URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (<|%3C).*script.*(>|%3E) [NC,OR]
# Block out any script trying to set a PHP GLOBALS variable via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|[|%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
# Block out any script trying to modify a _REQUEST variable via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|[|%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})
# Send all blocked request to homepage with 403 Forbidden error!
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L] 

I suppose you could copy n' paste it... if you think it will help...

[modnar]

Thanks for the replies, everyone! I had not made any changes to my .htaccess file, and, early on, support even restored a previous version but it had no affect. I had noticed that .htaccess in my public_html and the dir below it both had timestamps within the previous 48 hours (the same timestamp). However, I could see nothing that looked odd. I tried a few things that had no affect.

Over 24 hours later, Level 2 restores an older version and that resolved the issue.

I had been in CPanel earlier this week, and, although I didn't make any changes that should be related to .htaccess, it seems likely that I triggered something that made a change.

I just did a diff between the old and new versions, and this was the new line (with the domains changed):

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://subdomain.domain.org/.*$ [NC]

So, it definitely was something in Cpanel, although I'm not sure why that made a difference, and I even tried commenting that line out while I was having problems.

[Ron]

I even tried commenting that line out while I was having problems.

It is possible you fixed the problem earlier but didn't know it.

Ya gotta be careful when testing changes like that to ensure you're not getting hosed by the system's or your browser's caches.

When I make a change and don't see expected results, first thing is to hold the shift key down while you click on "Refresh" to ensure your browser makes a full request from the server. Then I make a secondary, unrelated change that I KNOW will result in a different result and ensure that I get the expected behavior.