Error on form submit

[AlienWebguy]

Hey guys -

I recently performed a server migration and now one of the forms on one of my sites (that I know of, could be more on others I suppose) is having issues.

I've been troubleshooting for hours and I've managed to isolate the issue to: if the form has 2 html tags in a row (ex '<br /><br />' or '<br /><img ...') it'll fail and the browser spits this at me "Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete." If there is only one tag at any given point (there can be many in the form as long as they are not back-to-back, it'll post just fine.

I've played with my mod_security settings and even just did a ctrl+a ctrl+x ->save settings to see if SOMETHING in the file was conflicting, and the line break issue remained. ctrl+v and saved.

This seems to only be happening on one form on the site. My forum (self-scripted) shares the same Form class and posts just fine. The textarea uses tinymce, but does my forum and its not broken there so I don't think it's an issue.

The form posts to the same page. I've tried posting to a direct url and the issue remains.

Any and all help is appreciated. Let me know if you need any code provided.

Thanks!
--S--

[AlienWebguy]

Also, from reviewing my error logs, I'm seeing this:

[Tue Dec 15 06:52:03 2009] [error] [client 68.XX.XX.227] File does not exist: /home/example/public_html/error, referer: http://www.example.com/account/edit-profile
[Tue Dec 15 06:52:03 2009] [error] [client 68.XX.XX.227] File does not exist: /home/example/public_html/error, referer: http://www.example.com/account/edit-profile
[Tue Dec 15 06:52:03 2009] [error] [client 68.XX.XX.227] File does not exist: /home/example/public_html/error, referer: http://www.example.com/account/edit-profile
[Tue Dec 15 06:52:03 2009] [error] [client 68.XX.XX.227] File does not exist: /home/example/public_html/error, referer: http://www.example.com/account/edit-profile

etc....

[edited by: dreamcatcher at 12:33 am (utc) on Dec. 16, 2009]
[edit reason] Exemplified. [/edit]

[rocknbil]

"Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete."

This is bad, a recursive loop somewhere, pretty sure . . .

[Tue Dec 15 06:52:03 2009] [error] [client 68.XX.XX.227] File does not exist: /home/example/public_html/error,...

Presuming "index.php" is in this directory, it's not indexing properly (I think?) Fix that at the server level or change your links to /error/index.php.

[edited by: dreamcatcher at 12:34 am (utc) on Dec. 16, 2009]
[edit reason] Exemplified. [/edit]

[gacba]

You should also confirm that you properly migrated all of your Apache settings and PHP properties. Looks like (if the code WAS working before) something's hosed on the new side.

[AlienWebguy]

@rocknbil - that's actually a really good idea to create an error directory and stick an index.php file in there. I'll also try mod_rewrite and just catch it in the .htaccess. Why do you think it's just this one form (specifically in the textarea when I insert two tags back to back)? All the other forms with tinymce textareas post fine regardless of what content is provided in the field. I can't find anything in that file (user.edit-profile.php) that suggests some missing or incorrectly-pathed include file or anything.

@gacba - The migration was a complete upgrade from hardware to software. Apache went from 1.x to 2.2, PHP went from 5.2.x to 5.3.1, etc. I hired ConfigServer to setup the firewall and mailscanner and mod_security for me but I hired them on my last box too. The thing that's making me not jump on apache or php settings is that it's only this one form and only when 2 html tags are inserted into the textarea back to back. I even tried inserting like "test />< test" and it posted fine, but when I inserted "test <br /><br /> test" it'd fail.

[AlienWebguy]

Created directory 'error' and added an index.html file in there. Issue remains.

[AlienWebguy]

Ok Update: The same exact issue is affecting another site on my server. Same class file, same tinyMCE plugin on the textarea.

[AlienWebguy]

Well, with no help from WebmasterWorld I did manage to fix it. I feel inclined to post the solution in case anybody else shares the issue.

It turns out mod_security was updated and had a recursion signature rule and cross-site scripting (XSS) rule that were making hell across my server. Commented those out and everything works fine now.

For security I will not be posting which rules were removed.

Thanks anyway.

--S--

[whoisgregg]

Thanks for posting the solution, AlienWebguy!

I think mod_security is an under-utilized module (so doesn't have a lot of depth with folks who are otherwise quite experienced). I hope you'll stick around and share your experience with it when other folks run into problems with mod_security. :)