Tech Guys...

I've gotten several of messages like these today:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: preg_replace() in /home/wordforg/public_html/includes/class_core.php on line 1963

When posting both in threads and PMs.

It's greek to me!

Funnily enough, I got one when I tried to read this thread, and another when I tried to respond to it...

Well, I'm looking into it.

Not sure how far I'll get though. preg_replace appears to be working elsewhere in the code, and I don't see anything wrong with the regular expression specified in this specific preg_replace.

It's the same thing as has been happening with the 403 forbidden errors, except that a different file is getting them rather than the one you're actually loading.

What does that mean exactly?

It's technical.

I'm a Tech Tard.

For some reason that seems to be at best temporarily fixed by rebooting the VM, that neither Nick or I has been able to determine, files are randomly appearing to be forbidden, even though their permissions are not actually changing. If it happens to the file you're browsing (such as forumdisplay.php or showthread.php), you get a 403 Forbidden error. If it happens to be a file that's referenced by the file you're browsing, you get a PHP error like the above.

If that's the case, my first suspicion would be a virus.

A Linux virus? We're running LAMP*, not WIMP**.

For the non-techies:
*Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP
**Windows-IIS-My/MS SQL-PHP

My bad. Somehow I had the impression we were on a standard WinDoze server.

Hmmm . . . still sounds virus-like, tho. Or perhaps . . . a process in conflict with another one under certain circumstances. If something is making a database call and is interrupted or blocked by another one somehow. Gaaah, I don't know enough about this shit.