Products dropped from Shopping Cart

[escaping]

Hi Guys, really needing some help. Using OSCMax 2.0.3. It's been heavily modded.

Previous to around Jan 30th, our cart was functioning fine. Around the 30th, it began to malfunction. We had made no changes to code and our script that monitors for file changes (hackers) reports that no files were changed.

Currently, when a customer places an item in their cart, if they attempt any other operation such as checkout or just browsing to another product, the items are dropped from the cart. I have assumed this was a session issue, but don't really know.

We have tried uploading a backup of the site without any change in symptoms. Although this symptom does not appear on our dev server, uploading files from there has had no effect on the symptoms on our site either. We have tried switching between file and db based session storage, flushing caches and searching everywhere online for others having the same symptoms. At this point, I can only assume that an update of PHP or Apache or MySql that was applied by our web host has conflicted with some part of our code.

The only other odd symptom is that at the same time, our site began to send us emails about broken links. Each states the site tried to load catalog/images/misc/nothing.gif. That dir nor file either actually exist and I've searched our code for any reference to "nothing.gif" and it doesn't exist in our code.

Really stumped at this point. I suspect the issue doesn't exist in the default OSCMax install or you'd have heard about it. Hoping though that the symptom will point some knowledgeable individual toward a likely spot for me to begin looking.

We greatly appreciate any assistance anyone can offer us. Thanks in advance and best wishes.

Art

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Well, in times of desperation, we try desperate things. Thinking the issue to be related to sessions, I turned on "Force Cookies". Seems like once upon a time, I was told that was bad. I think I've seen since that it enhances security.

At any rate, this setting cured the problem of products disapperaing. The odd "nothing.gif" links still occur. Quite odd but at least we're selling again.

Anyone have input on the pros or cons of the force cookies setting other than the obvious that customers must have cookies on?? Thanks again for any assist or info on the "nothing.gif".

Art

[michael_s]

Try storing sessions in mysql instead of the filesystem. The setting is at the bottom of your configure.php file - store sessions - set it to mysql.

Forcing cookies is neither bad nor good. It is just an option like any other. You can't set it to true if you are using shared ssl. Other than that it should be fine.

[escaping]

Try storing sessions in mysql instead of the filesystem. The setting is at the bottom of your configure.php file - store sessions - set it to mysql.

Forcing cookies is neither bad nor good. It is just an option like any other. You can't set it to true if you are using shared ssl. Other than that it should be fine.

Thanks for the really quick reply. I was storing sessions in mysql initially. Tried the filesystem only to see if it would help. Setting is already back to mysql now and forcing cookies. I appreciate you letting me know there isn't any other consideration on that issue.

Any ideas on something that would cause the bad nothing.gif links. We get one with just about any movement on the site so there are frequently hundreds of them an hour.

Thanks again for the assist and all your work on OSCMax. Don't know where we'd be without it!

Art

[michael_s]

Without knowing your exact server setup, it would be tricky to diagnose remotely. You need to find out from your host if anything has changed as far as php configuration. Then you need to check for hacks/exploits and rule them out. Typically when things suddenly stop working it usually is the host changing settings or the site has been hacked.