Forums

Tried to edit my form today and got this error:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 35 bytes) in /home/henrycou/public_html/libraries/phputf8/utils/unicode.php on line 208

Using 32Mb of memory is quite a bit, even for php. Are you using a very large form?
Try raising the memory limit (you'll find numerous posts all around the forum regarding how to).

/Fredrik

the form is a general generic contact form. name, email, etc.

will check. never had this problem before with a form.

Hi dsmflash,

The function where it is timing out is one the is converting UTF-8 from Unicode - not something that ChronoForms calls directly in any code that I've seen. It sounds as though there is some big document or page being coverted?

Bob

GreyHead,

I don't have any large documents. this a simple contact form. never had this with my other site. guess i'm going to have to reinstall.

Ok, after much experimentation, Chrono 5.5 seems to not play with 1.5.14. Reinstalled 5.5 and now cannot even create a new form.

Going to install an older version and see what's going on. Will post back for other users.

Tracing that part of the Joomla code is... less than trivial. In the end, almost any utf8_* function may end up calling utf8_from_unicode(). That, on it's turn would include pretty much any method in the JString class...
Unfortunately, all this tells us is that there is something eating up large amounts of memory somewhere before one of the invocations of that function.

This could mean there is some plugin eating the memory, a rare memory-leak in joomla, any plugins, CF or other, or that your form has reached the limit of what your hosting can handle. Simply having a trivial contact-form should rule out the last though.
Unfortunately, again, these kind of issues are generally very hard to track down, and usually requires advanced memory profiling/debugging tools and environments.

Personally, I havn't had any issues using CFv3.1RC5.5 with J!1.5.14. Was this most recent endeavour on a fresh J! install?

/Fredrik

I recently discovered that Chrono 5.5 and Joomla 1.5.14 do not play well together.

5.5 will install, but when trying to create a new form or editing even the simplest form, i receive this error:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 35 bytes) in /home/henrycou/public_html/libraries/phputf8/utils/unicode.php on line 208

I have tested 5.5 on some of my older Joomla test sites and successfully determined it was a 5.5 and 1.5.14 issue.

This has nothing to do with php.ini, the fatal error is actually a false error. My form only had a name and email field, nowhere close to a size issue.
I'm going to install an older version of Chrono until the next release.

I will post back with additional findings/results.

I'm just going by concrete results. chrono 5.5 works on older versions of Joomla, but not on 1.5.14, and on same server. Furthermore, it was the only extension was installed, which i do to isolate the problem area.

so what other conclusion would you make? i think chrono is great, just doesn't play with 1.5.14.

Hi Fredrik & dsmflash,

@Fredrik: yes that makes sense.

@dsmflash: the only major problem that I know about with the current release is that it evaluates the code on saving in the Form Manager which can sometimes cause the save to fail if there is PHP embedded in the form code e.g. a redirect will redirect, an include may fail if the path is realtive.

Max is aware of this problem. However, it doesn't seem to fit your symptom.

Bob

Hi dsmflash,

**Please do not cross-post. I will delete any more that I find.**

The out of memroy error is a pretty much 100% reliable indicator that you are out of memory. Have you tried increasing it?

Bob

this is not a cross post. trying to save some users some time. totally new type of post.

it is not a memory problem. i just installed 5.3 on 1.5.14 and its working fine.

that's the thing, its never chrono forms. chrono is the best form solution out there, but its not perfect , no extension is.

if 5.5 does not work on 1.5.14, and i install 5.3 on 1.5.14 and it does work, what's the obvious conclusion?

i'm running a dedicated server with more gigs of disk space and ram you could ever wish for. So, NO, its not a memory issue.

If a simple Chrono form with a name and email field takes up that much memory, then that's a real problem.

This is interresting and very odd..
The 1.5.14 release was just a rushed hotfix, containing two fixes:
* TinyCME editor $file_browser_callback (#17323)
* Media Manager broken (#17319)

Not sure how either would cause CF to suddenly stop working due to memory resources. Your installation must be borderline to 32Mb as is. I'm having a 1.5.14 installation running without a hitch with 16Mb resource-limit (Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) PHP/5.2.5 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.8.31 OpenSSL/0.9.7e-p1), so there is something very odd at works here..

/Fredrik

I have only tested as high as 1.5.11. My test Joomla sites are 1.5.7 - 1.5.11. I tested on 1.5.11 and 5.5 works fine, as well as 1.5.14.

I don't have hard data, i just know that 5.5 does not work for me on 1.5.14. I think anyone could draw the conclusion that the issue is between 5.5 and 1.5.14 (possibly 1.5.12 and .13).

Hi dsmflash,

With the greatest of respect, you saying it isn't a memory problem is a much less reliable guide than the Apache error saying that the server is out of memory. This has nothing to do with RAM or disc space, there's a php.ini setting that allocates memory to the PHP process - your is set to 32Mb and you are hitting the limit.

Bob

Also with all due respect, then why does the error go away when installing a previous version of Chrono?

Its not a memory problem. Plenty of memory. i only have 5 sites on a dedicated server and they have low to medium traffic. And the form only had two fields. yOu can't tell me that's going to cause a memory issue. if it was that bad, my other sites would be affected to.

a conflict with chrono and 1.5.14 is causing this false reading.

I'm telling you, I will wager anything its Chrono. The older version works fine. come on Greyhead, you know that's obvious.

feel free to believe what you want, but i know what i'm seeing and have experimented enough to know what's going on in this situation.

This has nothing to do with RAM or disc space, there's a php.ini setting that allocates memory to the PHP process - your is set to 32Mb and you are hitting the limit.

Bob

Hi dsmflash,

if you googled the error :

This error indicates that your PHP process on your server ran out of memory. When PHP is run, a certain amount of memory is reserved for your use and if a script tries to use more memory than is available you can run into problems.

Some users meet this error directly in the forms manager, I think its because of the plugins classes loading, however, in the form edit/create page, there is also the anti spam image generation which may take a bit more memory and I think that it pass the limit there, or maybe its affected by something else on your server.

As Bob suggested, the practical solution is increasing the allowed memory size for the php, here are 2 ways to do it:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/777/solve-php-fatal-error-allowed-memory-size-of-8388608-bytes-exhausted-tried/

Sometimes we have a huge load and we prefer to save efforts for giving the best working answers, as long as the details are for a non Chronoforms problem and can be found easily on the internet!🙂

Regards,
Max

I see the other post is locked.

I guess i'll say it again. it IS NOT a memory issue. Attached is a shot of my server status to quash that once and for all.

I've tried the php.ini file and it does NO GOOD. Its a conflict that is giving a false reading, so it doesn't matter what you do. Its just there. I'm using Chrono 5.3. I have no choice.

my server stats. plenty of memory

[attachment=0]chron0-serverstats.JPG[/attachment]

Yes. it was a fresh install.

Hi dsmflash,

in order to fix this we need to do this:

add this line to your php.ini file:

memory_limit = 80M;

then restart the web server/apache

if you are unsure about any of the 2 steps then you may ask your server admin for guidance, they should help you with this!

I believe that this will fix it!

btw, the server stats graph doesn't help with this issue at all, its measured the moment you ran the server stats script! although 0.8% may be more than 32M if your server RAM size is 4 GB or more ? anyway it doesn't help much!

Regards
Max

its my server, so i have root access. thanks Max. did you look at my server status? I have plenty of memory. Going to upgrade to 512 this week just to make sure.

Now if i can just get the "Operation Aborted" error with ReCaptcha fixed. 😟

Hi dsmflash,

If you want help here, then please read the messages. I think that there have been at least four so far saying that your total installed memory IS NOT THE ISSUE

Bob

My posts are not being read as well. I posted a screen shot of my server status. AND the results of installing different version of chrono with different versions of Joomla. I've exhausted almost every option to identify the problem, to NO avail.

So in conclusion, my problem was NEVER addressed because its never a Chrono issue. At least admit when there is a Chrono issue, or there is no point to having a support forum.

CHRONO IS GIVING A FALSE READING. IT'S NOT A MEMORY ISSUE.

Hi dsmflash,

Like I said before, please *read* the replies - or go Google the error message.

The symptom that you have is that you are maxing out the memory allocated to PHP - this is a tiny fraction 32Mb of the memory you have installed. Your server charts are not relevant (see Max's post).

The usual an easy fix for this is to increase the memory allocated to PHP. You have root access so you can presumably do this - you may need to check the PHP or Apache manuals to find out exactly how.

What's causing the memory to max out is completely impossible to say from the information you have given us. I am running pretty much the same setup as you CF 5,5 or Joomla 1.5.14 with 32Mb of Memory and have some very complex forms on my test site and have never seen the memory Max out unless I have let a loop go out of control.

With simple ChronoForms we've prety much never had this problem reported except by you; some recent issues with the Excelwriter (now solved) and occasional timeouts on installation.

So, in the absence of any tangible evidence to the contrary I have to assume that there is something amiss with either your form or your setup. I have absolutely no idea what that might be though.

Bob

let me know what "tangible evidence" you need and i'll get.


I'm prepared to go the distance on this topic

I'm probably giving this thread more attention than it should have by posting further, but here it goes..

To set things straight:
dsmflash, you keep saying "chrono is giving a false reading".
The error message does not originate from ChronoForms, neither does it from Joomla. It originates from the PHP core, and is only generated whenever your PHP application tries to allocate more memory than is permitted. Unless you show me where this error would be generated within either Joomla or ChronoForms, I see no foundation for your claim of a "false reading". You are in fact running out of memory.

Increasing the memory-limit in modest steps, while observing changes in the errors, is the next step in debugging these kind of issues. If slightly increasing the memory-limit removes the problem, then you most likely have some exotic setup that requires a large amount of memory. If, however, increasing this limit does not remove - or move the location - of the error, that's a good indication of an infinite loop hogging up memory, or some other memory leak..

If you can't even help us with this step, then the best way to describe the situation would probably be like looking for a hypthetically existant needle in a haystack..

/Fredrik