[users@httpd] Random pages and display weirdness

[Sean Whyte <se...@westringtech.com>]

This is an odd problem and I'm not sure how to describe it exactly.

 

About 2 months ago (at least that's when we first noticed) we started
having weird problems with our website. The types of problems we would
see are the following:

1.	Web pages would display in text only
2.	CSS files wouldn't be rendered properly making pages look ugly
(black lines around images, not formatting correctly)
3.	Sometimes an entirely wrong page would display.

 

The problem is VERY intermittent, about once a day, and usually only
lasts for < 2 minutes. It will then go away with no intervention. Most
of the time, the problem is gone by the time we can start
troubleshooting, which makes it hard to get specifics. When the problem
occurs, all 3 of  those problems are happing. I can click on a link and
get text, click reload and get some completely different page, click
reload again and get the correct page displayed properly, click reload
again and the formatting is all messed up, etc. And then the problem
will just go away.

 

 

This is how our system is configured:

 

We are running 64-bit Apache 2.0.59 on Suse 10.2. The Apache server is
responsible for server static pages and images, doing SSL and load
balancing. It load balances between 2-64-bit JBoss 4.2.1 servers, also
running on Suse 10.2

 

Apache is configured with 3 virtual hosts on their own IP addresses. It
communicates with JBoss via mod_jk (v. 1.2.25)

 

These are the facts about the problem:

1.	Intermittent.
2.	Doesn't required user intervention to fix it.
3.	Restarting the JBoss servers doesn't fix the problem.
4.	Restarting Apache (/bin/apachectl stop, /bin/apachectl start)
doesn't fix the problem.

 

We have only had 1 time where the problem persisted for about 20 minutes
while we tried to fix it. That's when we restarted all the JBoss
services and Apache, but the problem was still there. We then actually
reboot the Apache server, and the problem was gone. Since the server
took about 15 minutes to reboot, we can't be sure that the problem
didn't just go away on its own during that time making it just a
coincidence.

 

We are just hoping that maybe someone has seen this before. Despite all
our scrambling when it happens and searches on Google, we really aren't
any closer to an answer.

 

Sean