Solved J! 2.5.7 + K 2.0.2 + shape5_vertex template -> cookie problems

Hi

We've tested both on a cPanel server provided by one of the largest data centres in the US, locally on local server, running Ubuntu 12.10; Apache2, with various Joomla templates and versions and we can tell you quite categorically that the issueONLY EVER OCCURS with the following configuration:

Joomla 2.5.7 + Kunena 2.0.2 installation + SEF & Mod Rewrite

If I disable SEF in Joomla 2.5.7 we still get cookies but nothing like the volume.

If we use a different template, same issues.

The only way we have been able to get it to work is with Joomla 1.5 + Kunena 2.0.2 & SEF etc turned on. 1 cookie.

Now you may see this as a slant against Kunena, it's not. I'm a developer with 17+ years experience and I simply want to find out what is causing the issue and resolve it.

The configuration posted above should be sufficient but feel free to ask for more information should you need it.

Thanks.

Thank you for you response. We appreciate the efforts that you are making to resolve this issue. i have not seen this kind of problem reported before on this forum and, indeed, i am unable to see how we are able to reproduce it on this site ( www.kunena.org ). Have you tried the When all else fails, try this approach?

From what you have written, I think we should continue to eliminate as many possible causes as we can until we are left with the most basic configuration that clearly points to K 2.0.2 as the culprit. This is why I suggest that you create, on your current webhosting, a "vanilla-flavoured" J 2.5.7 site (with SEO enabled)', no other extensions/third-party templates installed, K 2.0.2 "out-of-the-box" with no changes made to it and see if the "cookie monster" makes its appearance under those conditions. This should take you about an hour to do this simple test.

HI

That's what we did do, both on a local and remote server.

What's strange is that the following configurations produce one or possibly only a few cookies:

• Joomla 1.5 + Kunena 2 with SEF and Mod rewrite enabled
• Joomla 1.7 / 2.5 + Kunena 2 with SEF and mod rewrite disabled

If we disable SEF in the last installation and clear all cookies in cache we are still left with a few cookies, more than we we would like.

I'm thinking it's neither Kunena nor Joomla at fault but the combination of the two.

I have lots of spare domains so if you like I can setup an account and PM the details so you can replicate yourself as I know that when troubleshooting that's the hardest part, replicating the problem.

Very strange. If you created a test site (using a minimum Jooma 2.5.7 + SEO and K 2.0.2) on a local site then this is quite unusual. The website here - at www.kunena.org - is built in J! 2.5.7 and I don't see the issues here.

When I visit the wesbite shown in your config. report I do not get any messages like the following:

Bad Request - Your browser sent a request that the server could not understand.
Size of a request header field exceeds server limit
Cookie

I wonder if this is a browser issue? What browser are you using? I do not have any issues like what you're having if I use Firefox 16.0.1, Internet Explorer 9 or Google Chrome 22.

I assume that I should see the error message (as reported in msg #1 of this topic) as soon as I go to the forum page. Is that correct?

We do not have a PM feature at this website.

Do you see a manifestation of the problem here at www.kunena.org - because we're using J! 2.5.7 + standard Joomla SEO and the standard Kunena menu here - well, it's almost "standard".

Hi

The error in question is only happening now and again and we have no idea how many users it is affecting as they will simply think the site is broken.

Once we switched off SEF the cookies dropped down to something like 4 (curiously the same as your site) and the errors stopped.

If you like, pay a visit to internetspain.net. It's using the identical template but no Kunena and I noticed that this also was generating a lot of cookies.

I've got my head in my hands on this one because it appears from looking at internetspain.net that Joomla 2.5 works fine as I have used it on other sites but with this template and/or Kunena it causes a load of cookies to be generated.

Something I am considering is injecting some PHP into the debug area to clear all cookies from the local machine on exit.

How would this affect Kunena though, would the user still see unread topics etc...?

Can you please tell us what tool(s) you are using to see these errors; in particular, I want to know how to see

Bad Request - Your browser sent a request that the server could not understand.
Size of a request header field exceeds server limit
Cookie

How do I see the number of cookies created by this website? Is this a problem? This website uses cookies (most Joomla websites use cookies in one form or another) and that's where the [Kunena] forum/user preferences are stored. I'm not sure whether PHP can generate cookies - PHP, after all, is server-side scripting whereas cookies are client-side. Therefore the most likely way of introducing cookies on the client site has to come via the HTTP PUT (in other words, via HTML - possibly with the assistance of Javascript). PHP (that runs on the server) merely obtains information passed to it via the HTTP GET request but I can't understand how PHP writes cookies back on the client. My technical knowledge of PHP doesn't extend that far.

I really think we need to know how you're able to measure the number of cookies written and what conditions are required to generate the "Bad Request".

The error code is not specific to Kunena as my search of Google revealed >>> here <<<

From what I've read, the issues could be caused by corrupted cookies in your browser. One possible solution is to look at support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/delete-cook...lug=Deleting+cookies