Language File Not Loading, Fails to Translate Defines

[jacdesigner]

I have had this problem intermittently for weeks now, and I have not had any luck finding any posts about this on the forums. Please lend any help, suggestions that you can!

WHAT I HAVE:
New install (not upgrade) Zencart 1.3.7, using a custom template based on Classic in the overrides directories. There are very few custom modules on this site, only one payment gateway setting (using preinstalled AIM mod). These issues occurred previous to setting up that module.

WHAT IS HAPPENING:
Periodically, the template will display with various language tags, as if it "gave up" translating everything. We have looked into it on the back end and it seems like the language file just doesn't get loaded (template doesn't read it). But only SOMETIMES, intermittently. If you refresh a few times, it will start working again, then you go to another page, it fails, then again and again, then its ok....etc. We enabled a log file and no errors are showing up on the logs.

INTERESTING INFO:
We notice that if we do a hard restart of Apache web server, things start working again for a little while. Then the problem crops up again later. But again, just intermittently.

We also tried rebuilding PHP and recompiling it. This fixed the issue (seemedly) for a little while, then about a week passed and it cropped up again. And nothing has changed on the server since.

This is the only Zencart site that is having this problem, out of several others that we have developed and hosted.

IDEAS:
Someone suggested maybe I should copy all of the default language files into my custom directories (even the ones I did not change). Although this sort of defeats the ease of the override system, I am wondering if anyone sees harm in this. Perhaps it would help the system load up the language files if they are all in one place?

It would be nice to learn that someone on this planet has experience this issue and knows the underlying cause. I will share a screenshot shortly.

[Kim]

Does it happen with all language files or only certain ones? Where do you have the language overrides in the Zen Cart structure?

[jacdesigner]

Does it happen with all language files or only certain ones? Where do you have the language overrides in the Zen Cart structure?

It seems to happen for all elements across the site, including page titles, link names, category names, box headings, button images, product names, and others. Sometimes a few elements will display correctly (such as the top page title will show fine, or one of the box headings will show) and the rest will just display in the tag format (such as: CATEGORY_BOX_HEADING or something like that).

My language files are stored in their respective custom template folders such as:
/includes/languages/english/custom/..
and
/includes/languages/custom/english.php

If you would like me to dig for any other details, feel free to ask.

[Kim]

What other languages are you using?

[jacdesigner]

What other languages are you using?

Hi, Kim,

I am only using English. I have no other language packs installed at this time.
Thank you for trying to help.

[Kim]

What sort of server are you using? PHP and MYSQL versions? What are you to upload the files? What are you using to edit?

[kuroi]

Normally this sort of intermittent problem would suggest a developing hardware problem. However, you have also posted several times about files and classes not loading properly. Is it possible that this is a symptom of slightly dodgy upload originally, or even problems with your original Zen Cart release package?

If it's within your control, I'd also do a check on the physical media upon which your Zen Cart is hosted to ensure that there aren't problems there.

[jacdesigner]

In regards to server setup:

SUN OS (Solaris)
MySQL 4.0.26
Apache/1.3.37
PHP 4.4.7 (Zend: 1.3.0)

Thank you Kuroi for the hardware failure suggestion. I will ask the admin to start exploring that possiblity.

[jacdesigner]

Just a brief update. We did not discover any problems with server hardware, and there were also no other signs of that type of issue. We have enabled some additional PHP error logging on top of what was already in place, in hopes that something will give us clues. If anyone has other suggestions or advice, I am all ears.

[cachehit]

Hello,

We are running several zc sites on various Linux and Solaris servers, with a mysql4 on Linux backend. For the most part it works great.

Howevever... on one of our 1.3.7 installations on a SPARC Solaris 8 machine it is exhibiting some very odd behaviour. This is with apache 1.3.39 and php 4.4.8. Basically, after an unknown amount of time, somtimes an hour, sometimes a couple days, the site stops interpreting the language file and instead when you view it it prints out bunch of things like TEXT_GREETING at the top, TEXT_BUY, TEXT_NOW, TEXT_* instead of the things that these constants are defined() to in includes/languages/english and includes/languages/english/custom. Only a hard apache restart will fix it. apachectl restart does not do it - you have to kill httpd and start it back up.

The database connection is setup as non-persistent. Oddly, everything still seems to work in the system even when it is not printing out the proper text - the products still come up, you can add to shopping cart, etc. Its just like the language files are not being processed.

Thanks for any insight.

--
John
[email protected]