Parts of the GUI missing.. [RESOLVED]

[DrBen]

Hi folks,

long time Gargoyle user, long time lurker here, expressing my great gratitude to Eric. Awesome service at the community, delivering such a unique and polished piece of software, right up my alley!

To the point:
Im struggling with an annoying sporadic issue for quite a while now, and I cant find the evils source:
Some parts of the router interface (most of the "Overview section" just doesnt display. A few details:
- it doesnt happen right after installation, the router works fine for a while (e.g. a week), and all of a sudden the GUI parts disappear
- one part missing are the bandwidth graphs (similar has been reported on this forum before)
- in BW/ Distribution, Web Usage, Connected Hosts, Connection List, the actual data is missing, but the frame (headline, border etc.) is there
- affects at least 1.5.6, 1.5.9, 1.5.10
- It happens on different browsers (tested Chrome, Safari, Firefox)
- I could sometimes fix it with with reflashing the router, but not consistently.
- It happened on several different routers (Im using several different Buffalo WZRs)

Remedies I tried:
Reflashing, factory reset, browser cache delete, other browser, other client computers (incl. iPads, Androids etc.), new router hardware (bought the almighty AG300NH, what a beast..)
As stated, reflashing (tftp) seems to sometimes work, but it being sporadic, maybe thats just a coincidence.

This morning, it happened again on my 1.5.9 installation. I upgraded to 1.5.10 (sysupgrade, keeping settings). All works well, but the mentioned parts are still gone.
Any pointers on what I could try or read are higly appreciated.

Cheers
Ben

[DrBen]

okay, I played around a little more..
If you look at attached screenshot, it is not only the graphs missing, but the drop downs also do not contain any dynamic values anymore (as those on the bottom of the page).
But maybe also interesting is the behaviour of the "Save High Resolution" button. When activated, up comes a message "resetting graphs", so I had a brief moment of hope. Turns out, after a few seconds of swirling, the graphs are still gone, and the box isnt even ticked..
Checking the file /etc/config/gargoyle I can see the option being active ('1'). When I set to 0, and click the box in the GUI again, it resets the value to 1, but doesnt reflect that in the GUI.

Im at the end of ideas here. Everything points me to an issue in the router firmware, but being so sporadic, Im really tired of endless reflashing to get it going again for a little while.
If you got any idea on where else to look, please throw it in!

[BashfulBladder]

If you use Firefox, choose Tools-Web Developer->View Source

Do you see a section where it begins like this:

Code: Select all

 <script>
<!--
var monitorNames = new Array();
monitorNames.push("total1-download-2-449");

Choose Tools->Web Developer->Error Console
You may find a few things there - I certainly did, none pertain to the bandwidth section. How do I know? I typed "bandwidth" in the search field on the bottom (I had lots of theme related warnings).

----------
Having recently submitted a patch for the SVG graphics, I can tell you that they aren't some jpeg-type image. They are powered by data & scripting. A script that tells it to plot a line xxx high at timebase yyy. No data, no charting. All modern browsers (and older browsers with a plugin) can display SVG graphics. They all do javascript. These charts are a melding of javascript & SVG - well, they were until I ripped them into 2 separate files.

I haven't really looked into what data/format the charts require & where the data originates from & which process provides the data. If that is something you are interested in tracking down, the source is readily available.

The webpage loads & the shell script are run. Source:
http://www.gargoyle-router.com/gargoyle ... ndwidth.sh
ssh into your router & do the initial part of line 16:

Code: Select all

cat /tmp/bw_backup/*.sh

So you have any output - and I have no clue what the output of mine says, so don't ask.

Maybe you have a 4MB router? Do you have bwmon installed?

Code: Select all

opkg list-installed | grep bwmon

[DrBen]

thanks for your input!
Its for sure not a memory issue. This thing has 128 megs and I have never seen it above 40MB full.
I couldnt do the firefox log, because I already got impatient and reflashed..

Got another piece to the puzzle on the way:
Reflashed, logged on, checked graphs: OK. Reimported config file: graphs gone. Reset to factory: graphs OK.
Some settings seem to part of the problem..

Off to reconfigure the lot from hand..

edit: by applying my config scripts one after the other and checking the GUI after each, I found the culprit: My hosts file. Im am using /etc/hosts to maintain a local DNS-blacklist (adserver, stuff the kids shouldnt see etc.). This file hast about 10k entries. As soon as its applied, the GUI acts funny. As soon as I put it back to the ~30 lines I need for my network, its all good again.

Any ideas on how to prevent that?
To reproduce the issue, you can run

cd /etc
wget -O hosts.blocked http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
mv hosts hosts.bak
cat hosts.local hosts.blocked >> hosts
/etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

edit2:
And the solution is: removing comments and HTML garbage from the hosts file. Messing with the hosts file screws up the GUI.. interesting..