I am writing about a situation that our client is currently experiencing with Linux Mandrake, Apache, MySQL and PHP. We successfully deployed a website running on this type of system for a period close to two years. It has a HTML GUI component that the client can type or paste content into and it serves-up dynamic pages in PHP from a MySQL database. Recently the web site was hacked by the Travel Bug virus and it forced the client to restore the web site and server software mentioned below.
Original Install
Mandrake 8, MySQL 3.23.32, PHP 4.0.06 and Apache 1.3.26-x.x
Current Install
Mandrake 9.0, MySQL 3.23.52-1, PHP 4.2.3-1.1 and Apache 1.3.26-6.1
The current install has lead to new problems. Content with double and single quotes are showing up as squares or question marks. For example, I have a page that is showing the square symbol in place of double quotes. If I do a view source on that specific page I can see the double quotes but if I telnet into the server and query the MySQL record belonging to that page the square or double quote character is nowhere to found. The following items are the steps we tried to understand why this is happening.
First, we did the following to test the integrity of the MySQL backup file. We Restored the MySQL database on our test environment which has the original software specs mentioned above but on a window server running IIS not apache. I did a restore of the MySQL database file and did not get any invalid characters. Even though the environment isn’t completely identical to the clients we can make the assumption that the dump file wasn’t corrupted.
Second, possibly content editors were copying and pasting from word into the HTML GUI component thus creating these invalid characters. In most cases yes but I personally noticed the invalid character issue with a page that doesn’t use the HTML GUI component.
Third, Possibly the configuration especially the character set from the original version to the current version of MySQL is not configured correctly. We believe this to be the primary issue. The resolution is to configure or reinstall MySQL and restore from backup.
Fourth, has anyone tried the PHP functions to convert the invalid characters. A request was to look into the iconv() function. The iconv library functions convert strings between various character sets encodings. This involves compiling the PHP interpreter which is why I haven’t tested it.
Fifth, Can some other process running on the server be causing this?
Altogether, we soon will begin creating a test server identical to the original settings and step through the install and try to recreate the invalid character issue. But, if anyone has experienced this invalid character issue or has more information that would benefit us your help would greatly be appreciated.
John Ranaudo
Web Developer
