[TYPO3-english] Issues with Typo3 3.8.1 on PHP 5.2.4

[Freaky]

Hi there, 

at the end of 2009 our webserver (Plesk) crashed. We
migrated it to a new server (Ubuntu 8.04 TLS with Plesk (9.5.2 by now)),
and all sites, but 2 Typo3 sites, were running fine. 

Both of the Typo3
sites show similar behaviour in that they don't list the content of some
pages. Unfortunately, there are no errors logged by PHP either. Back then I
researched it for a bit and IIRC it had something do with $this being
called recursively by 'static info tables' extension. We set up an old
webserver based on ubuntu 6 TLS to run the sites and they run fine there.


Since it summertime, and we have some spare time, I decided to pick it up
again, as I rather do not have a webserver running for just 2 sites.
Security updates will also cease next year, so we'll have to go somewhere.


Anyways, as said, I'm not sure it's $this at all. I finally got it to
upgrade to 4.1.14, updated all extensions and nothing changed (so the site
still runs, but the pages that didn't return content, still don't). If I
edit the page I see the content, but viewing it from the admin section does
the same (no content). 

To clarify some things, we're just the hoster, not
the designer nor the customer and my Typo3 knowledge, other than how to
perform the base install equals 0. The original designer went bankrupt, so
they're off no use. 

We always figured the issue was with PHP 5.2, as I
recall a change with $this (calling from function/object itself, I somewhat
know PHP syntax, but I'm no coder) and saw some postings on an issue with
it back then, but no solution. After fiddling with it for 1,5 day now I got
fed up with it and decided to try on my home server (gentoo amd64 with PHP
5.2.13-pl0-gentoo) and to my suprise it runs fine there. Both machines
(ubuntu/plesk and my gentoo/manual config) run suhosin security patch on
PHP. 

We're through our options. If the logging doesn't register anything
it more or less stops. It's not that nothing is returned, it basically
sends an empty page (so the ,  etc are all there, but the pieces where
content is supposed to be are empty, we can also see the title in the
browser's window). Error logging also functions, I can see other errors pop
up in the logs, but nothing with respect to this issue. 

Any clues on how
to go further? 

Kind regards, 

Ferry