script broke freshly installed server

[Anon]

They installed php on my server at work today. Running this script:

http://www.tarastar.f2s.com/orange/script.txt

litteraly killed the server. It had to be restarted (SUN server).

The script works! see:

http://www.voodoochild.f2s.com/orange/script.php3?lang=de&file=actindex.man
http://www.voodoochild.f2s.com/orange/script.php3?lang=fr&file=actindex.man

we narrowed down the problem to these two lines:

$output = preg_replace("/<de>(.|\n|\r)*?<\/de>/", "", $output);
$output = ereg_replace("<\/?fr>", "", $output);

Questions:

is there anything wrong with my script?
does anybody have any idea what may be wrong with the server?

Any information would be appreciated:
[e-mail]

Thanks a lot!!

Tara
www.tarastar.f2s.com

[Anon]

What version of PHP are you running, and if it's pre-4.04, have you checked the changelog to see if it's a known bug?

[Anon]

phpinfo says:

PHP Version 4.0.3pl1 - I was told the latest version was downloaded.

-er... pardon my ignorance, but what is the changelog?

thanks!

Tara

[Anon]

That's a link on the front page of php.net that lists all the changes made in all the releases of php. 4.0.4 just came out, so if this problem is listed in the change log for a fix in 4.0.4 then the fix is just to upgrade, otherwise it may well be a bug report needs filiing.

In fact, there is a bug listed that is similar to yours:

Fixed a bug that could draw the shutdown sequence of the PHP Apache module into an endless loop, under certain circumstances. It could cause Apache processes under Solaris to get stuck, especially when using output buffering. (Zeev)