[Phplib-users] What's the Cache?

[Andrew C. <sou...@ev...>]

Greetings,

I'm having a really odd problem with a phplib-based application and am 
wondering if anyone else has seen this before.

The system uses phplib templates, database abstraction, and 
authentication and, generates a long listing of database records (about 
650 rows, currently) after authentication.  It takes a little under 20 
seconds after the request for the server to generate and send the page.

I have tried to get them to let me break the output into pages but, they 
like having the full listing all at once.

There are over a hundred users.  For most of them, everything works 
great.  For a handful of them - maybe a dozen - there is some kind of a 
weird caching problem.  They authenticate and, after the standard load 
time, end up with a blank page.  They can view other pages (like the 
User Administration page) with no trouble.

I had a chance to look at one of the problem systems first-hand this 
past week.  The user has two identical Compaq notebooks, running Windows 
XP.  All current patches are installed on both of them.  One system 
works perfectly and the other exhibits the problem.  I also connected my 
own notebook and had no trouble accessing the system.  So, it doesn't 
seem to be connection-specific.

After authentication, the problem system loads for about 20 seconds and 
then displays the blank page.  If we do anything to the URL while the 
blank page is displaying - remove the index.html from the end of the URL 
string or, add a query string - the listing appears instantly (from 
cache, presumably), even when it shouldn't (like when the query string 
tells it to display something else).

This happens in both IE and Mozilla.  According to the page info in 
Mozilla, the page is loading from disk cache.  Both browsers have been 
set to check the server for updated versions on every visit.

The problem systems seem to be able to load pages on other websites 
(even from the same server) with no issues.

Anybody have any idea what the problem might be and how to address it? 
I'm guessing a full system re-install would correct it but, that's going 
to be very unpopular and likely unworkable for most of the troubled users.

Andrew Crawford