Bizzare behaviour - server file contents "changed"

ianhobo

Hi,
I'm just wondering if anybody has encountered something like this before, or if anyone can offer an explanation

On a website I worked on over a year ago, I created two detailed google map pages with routed on them. The company who the website is for contacted me saying that *one* of the two maps has stopped working -> the google map loads, but the routes don't show up.

So I had a look at it last night and I am baffled as to what has happened.

I have it fixed, but basically the letter cases i.e Capitalisation Has Been Changed! preventing all of the javascript from working!

This has randomly happened throughout the html file in functions that I worte, google API functions, and dreamweaver/adobe javascript image function!

Example:

var r1 = new GLatLng(53.3443323573018, -6.260136365890503);

reLoad()
{
   ....
}

MM_preLoadImages()...

have all been changed to this:

var r1 = new glatlng(53.3443323573018, -6.260136365890503);

reload()
{
   ....
}

mm_preloadimages()...

All to lower case!! making them essentially different function!

There is no pattern to how this has occured, just pretty much randomly.

Any idea what could have caused this? A server transfer error surely would have corrupted the date or replaced the letters with garbage letters, not the exact same letter in a different case!

The last access time for file is the same as the working page (I can't remeber when I accessed them last)

Its an IIS server

Any ideas?
A ghost? Sabotage?

Thanks

colm_c

Sounds strange alright, a couple of things could have happened:

Someone either attempted to edit the site, and their site manager/text editor changed the casing accidentally.

They changed server, and in the transfer of file things got a little out of whack.

Maybe they did a restore from a backup and the backup wasn't configured appropriately?

ianhobo

yes, its a strange one.

Thanks for your input. Out of the 50+ files on the server only this one was affected, so I think this will probably rule out certain server issues, and probably points to someone being at the file.

Hadn't thought about the text editor things, still bizarre as it was quite random throughout the file, and the same case/copy of every piece of text wasn't affected


It's no big deal as its fixed now, was just a bit curious

seamus

If it's one particular file, it definitely sounds like someone looked at it in some odd editor and then stupidly pushed "yes" when asked if they wanted to save changes.

I've also had frontpage (the extension, not the editor) do odd thing to my PHP scripts when it's installed on the server. It tries to figure them out and ends up completely ripping them to shreds.

Bob the Builder

seamus wrote: »

If it's one particular file, it definitely sounds like someone looked at it in some odd editor and then stupidly pushed "yes" when asked if they wanted to save changes.

I've also had frontpage (the extension, not the editor) do odd thing to my PHP scripts when it's installed on the server. It tries to figure them out and ends up completely ripping them to shreds.

I wouldn't be surprised with frontpage does all the wrong things to scripts anyway. Do you still use Frontpage?

OP, one theory that I have as to how it may have happened, used to happen all the time when I was spellchecking using MSWord, before I realised dreamweaver had a spell checker is that I copied over pieces of code, to look at them, and then dreamweaver interpreted them as sentences and changed cases, so the person who may have looked the file started changing things back on whatever text editor they were using, hence, all lower case.

ianhobo

nevf wrote: »

I wouldn't be surprised with frontpage does all the wrong things to scripts anyway. Do you still use Frontpage?

OP, one theory that I have as to how it may have happened, used to happen all the time when I was spellchecking using MSWord, before I realised dreamweaver had a spell checker is that I copied over pieces of code, to look at them, and then dreamweaver interpreted them as sentences and changed cases, so the person who may have looked the file started changing things back on whatever text editor they were using, hence, all lower case.

brilliant, that sounds quite possible. I didn't do the initial design, but the redesign and the map parts. I'm pretty sure there was a CMS installed by the original company. So its plausible that a spell checker in the cms may have done it.

Thanks for all your input!

seamus

nevf wrote: »

I wouldn't be surprised with frontpage does all the wrong things to scripts anyway. Do you still use Frontpage?

I've never used it myself, but they have the extensions installed here on our Intranet server. They're useful for people who know very little about IIS and managing permissions and application groupings and that kind of stuff, but when you know exactly how your application needs things to be, it can make a mess of stuff when someone presses the "Health Check" button. This scans pages looking for broken links and tries to "fix" them. It doesn't understand PHP and makes a complete balls of the files.