On This Page:

Revive Adserver Broken.

A troubleshooting guide to help when Revive Adserver seems to be generally "broken".

Symptoms

General symptoms of Revive Adserver appearing "broken" include:

The user interface appearance (on installation, or pre-installation) being so "broken" that it is unusable;
Instead of showing a banner on a website, Revive Adsever appears to be showing part of the website itself;
Things just "don't work".

Troubleshooting Process

Step 1: Check Requirements

If the issue has appeared:

when you have just installed (or are attempting to install) Revive Adserver;
when you have just upgraded (or are attempting to upgrade) Revive Adserver;
when you have just performed an upgrade to underlying software (e.g. PHP or the database) that Revive Adserver depends on; or
when you have just migrated Revive Adserver to a different server

then check the requirements for the version of Revive Adserver. It may be that you need to change to a newer (or older) version of PHP or database, depending on the exact circumstances.

Step 2: Disable Adblockers

The use of Adblocker plugins in a browser often affect the ability of Revive Adserver to load content required for correct operation of the site. If the user interface appears "broken", disable your Adblocker plugin(s) and reload the page.

Step 3: Disable ModSecurity / suPHP

The correct configuration of ModSecurity or suPHP with Revive Adserver will depend very much on your requirements. If you're finding that Revive Adserver is "broken", first try turning off ModSecurity/suPHP completely, and see if that fixes the issue. If so, you know what the issue is, and can look to update your configuration to meet your needs, while still allowing Revive Adserver to work.

Step 4: Check ACLs

If Revive Adserver is reporting that it cannot read/write to directories, but the permissions appear to be correct, please check to ensure that there are no additional security systems in place beyond simple file permissions that are preventing access. There are a number of different security systems which could be causing the issue, however, some examples that have been noted in the past to cause issues include:

On Linux: SELinux.

Step 5: Disable Varnish Caching

There have been numerous reports of various things "not working" in Revive Adserver when Varnish is used as a delivery cache. Try disabling Varnish, and see if that fixes the issue.

Step 6: Check your Plugins

See:

Step 7: Check your Database

If you are using MySQL, use mysqlcheck to ensure that you do not have any corrupt database tables in your Revive Adserver database.

Additionally, if you are using MySQL, and you have upgraded to PHP 7, then you will need to change from using the mysql driver, to using the mysqli driver. This can be done by editing your configuration file, and changing the following:

[database]
type=mysql

to

[database]
type=mysqli

Step 8: Check your Log Files

Check both your Revive Aserver var/log/debug.log file and your web server's log file for error messages which may indicate issues with connecting to the database, or with an inability to access files.

Use a search engine to help you diagnose how to resolve any database access or file permission issues, as this will depend on your database and/or operating system.

In particular, please note:

HTTP 500 Error Code

An HTTP 500 error code occurs when there is an internal error with your web server. This indicates that something is incorrect with your web server configuration that is causing an error to occur before Revive Adserver gets a chance to run. You will need to diagnose and resolve the issue with your web server configuration.