Random Server Errors

I have developed some courses whereby a php script reads and displays a
textfile. Clicking a "Next" button increments a variable and submits the
form to the same page, which then reads and displays the next textfile. 99%
of the time, all works well, but occasionally a server error appears.
Refreshing the page seems to solve the problem, although in rare cases it no
longer recognizes the cookie set by the page.

Does anyone have any idea of what to look for to cut down on these server
errors? It is not a 404 page not found error. It happens at apparently
random intervals and cannot be reliably replicated, except that it seems to
happen more often if the user is not taking the time to read the text but
is clicking the "Next" button quite rapidly.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Keith Tellinghuisen

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 03:12:04 GMT, "Keith Tellinghuisen"
<keithtell@mindspring.com> wrote:

>I have developed some courses whereby a php script reads and displays a
>textfile. Clicking a "Next" button increments a variable and submits the
>form to the same page, which then reads and displays the next textfile. 99%
>of the time, all works well, but occasionally a server error appears.

Which error?

>Refreshing the page seems to solve the problem, although in rare cases it no
>longer recognizes the cookie set by the page.
>
>Does anyone have any idea of what to look for to cut down on these server
>errors? It is not a 404 page not found error. It happens at apparently
>random intervals and cannot be reliably replicated, except that it seems to
>happen more often if the user is not taking the time to read the text but
>is clicking the "Next" button quite rapidly.
>
>Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Dodgy webserver? (which one is it?). Dodgy PHP? (which version, which
interface?). What does the error say? (you haven't posted it). What do the
webserver logs say? Operating system error logs?

If it's intermittent then it's possibly load related. Does your webserver fall
over under high load? Your database? Whatever else you're using?

--
Andy Hassall (andy@andyh.co.uk) icq(5747695) (http://www.andyh.co.uk)
Space: disk usage analysis tool (http://www.andyhsoftware.co.uk/space)