Concerned About Upgrading Server PHP with ZC version 1.3.8a

[starrysky]

Hi, I am having a problem still with this same website, using the old version of ZC (1.3.8a). Back in 2018, I was able to find where enable error logging was. I cannot seem to find it now. Can someone please tell me where I would activate or deactivate this plugin?

Also, could this plugin be responsible for the database ballooning, or is there a different add-on or plugin that might be causing the database to balloon. Back in March of 2019, the size was 584MB, and in October, it was 1.9GB. This has started causing problems with our hosting provider.

Is it possible to delete the entries in the database that were generated by the log files, or would this be a different issue? Is there a way to shrink the database?

The plugins on this site are EZ PAges, Developers Toolkit, Install SQL Patches, User Tracking, Search Log Admin, Snapshot, Google Base Feeder, and Sitemap XML. Is it possible that one of these plugins can be responsible for the database ballooning? Any help would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

[swguy]

Your best bet would be to upgrade your store to the latest Zen Cart and upgrade your PHP at the same time. You're running very old, hackable versions of both.

Log files don't generate database entries, so that's not the cause of your database size increase. To determine where the growth is in your database, use phpMyAdmin and sort on table size (it's a column at the far right). If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say the email archive table because your store has been converted to a spam server, but that's just a guess.

[balihr]

..., User Tracking, ....

This... This thing right there... I'm putting my money on that. If you don't purge those records often, you might end up with a huuuuge table with tracking info. I just recently saw that table alone being over 5 GB, and that was less than 6 months of data...

Of course, Mr. Chief Cook and Bottle-Washer might also be right - if you have Email Archiving turned on, that could be it. And yes, upgrade without thinking - 1.3.8a is now 12 years old and is full of vulnerabilities and exploits.

[swguy]

No no I'm changing my vote. User tracking is a great guess. But having been hacked when running 1.3.8 is a virtual certainty.

[starrysky]

Yes, the User Tracking seems to definitely be it. When I checked the email archive table, there are 0 rows so that wasn't it.

However, I would like to know if there is a quick sql command by which I can delete all the rows in the user tracking table.

When I use the User Tracking dashboard, and I click on "purge all records more than 72 hours old," I get a confirmation message that this was done, but all rows are still in the database table, AND the user tracking data still displays on the user tracking dashboard.

When I checked the plugin page on ZC, it looks like there were bugs related to purging in this older version that weren't fixed, but were fixed in newer versions, for the newer versions of ZC only.

So, I am attempting to delete the rows through the PHPMyAdmin, but it seems to just hang and give errors when I try to delete too many manually at one time (by using check all, then the delete command, and I am only trying to delete 500 rows at a time).

Is there an sql query that I can put into the SQL query field using php myadmin that will delete all 22,823 rows (since that is clearly the issue with the database ballooning)? I am not familiar with PHPMyAdmin command, so that would be very helpful. Thank you!

[starrysky]

The Search Log table also has 25,000 rows in it (!) so I want to delete those as well. Is there anywhere on the site that this search logging can be turned off?

[carlwhat]

The Search Log table also has 25,000 rows in it (!) so I want to delete those as well. Is there anywhere on the site that this search logging can be turned off?

be very careful. no warranty. no going back.

in sql:

delete from TABLE_NAME;

i'm assuming you know the table names....

[starrysky]

Thank you very much. It turns out that the "delete records more than 72 hours old" in the user tracking module does, in fact, work. The database size went from 1.9gb to 18mb. I have deactivated this plugin for now, and the problem seems to have been resolved. Thank you again.

[starrysky]

Thank you very much for your help! I have one other question:

Number one, I would like to deactivate SSL for the ZC, version 1.3.8a, as the new server I migrated to does not have an SSL certificate installed (and no purchases are presently being made on the cart).

I followed instructions for doing so that I found on the forum here https://www.zen-cart.com/content.php...zen-cart-store, involving changing the admin/includes/configure.php and the includes/configure.php files, by changing the web addresses that are https to http, and setting SSL to false.

However, now the admin page gives an internal server error, and it seems to be unable to get to the login page. I would like to be able to add new items to the catalog, and there are a few items that I need to edit, so I do need access to the admin page for this website.

Thank you for your help!

[balihr]

Maybe you have something in your .htaccess file that forces https and redirects all non-https requests to https?

But, why are you doing that? You can get an SSL cert for free or buy one for like $5 per year. With both options in mind, why would you go back to being without it?