spam-prevention string not displayed in Add comment Form

[manoj]

HI,
I have enabled the Enable Captchas to YEs in Configure Anti-Spam Methods.
I am trying to add a comment to an entry the comment form is shown with various contols like Name, Email, Homepage,In replyto,Comment and then the below text is shown:

"Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like and are converted to images.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
[XCAPTCHA] --> here lies the problem
Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: "
But the string(CAPTCHA image) is not getting displayed
Thanks.
pls help.
manioj

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

What's your URL? You probably edited some PHP file and added bad characters - I can tell you more once you give me your URL.

Regards,
garvin

[manoj]

HI,

http://(IP)/serendipity_offshore/serendipity/index.php?/archives/12-Test-Philip.html#comments

Thanks.
manoj

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Well...without your IP of course I can't look at it

If you don't want to give us your URL, please use a binary tool like wget to get the URL of a captcha image, inspect the hex dump of that file and watch for any characters that prefix the JPEG header marker...

Best regards,
Garvin

[manoj]

hi,
For which file i should look the hex dump?
Thanks.
manoj

[garvinhicking]

The URL of the broken spam-captcha image.

[manoj]

how to get the hex dump?

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

The tool "wget" can do that, or any other tool that is able to save URLs as raw files.

You can then edit the download files with binary editors, UltraEdit or other tools for example.

HTH,
Garvin

[judebert]

If you're using *nix, od -x {filename} is the way to get a command-line hex dump.

[manoj]

HI,

HOw to enable the CAPTCHAS in ADD COMMENT FORM?
I mean what are the settings that i have to make.
Because even after I have enabled the Enable Captchas to YEs in Configure Anti-Spam Methods, its not shown in add comment form.

Actually i have downloaded wget and wanted to send you the URL but now the CAPTCHA itself is not shown.

Pls guide me.
thanks.
manoj

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

If you are logged in to your blog, Captchas are disabled for registered authors. Try with another browser where you are not logged in, or log out. Or configure the spamblock plugin to not bypass antispam for specified usergroups.

Best regards,
Garvin

[atthink]

Hello garvin~

I am having the same question on my site, and I hope you can help me solve it.

The causing problem I guess may be some other plugins, because yesterday the captcha images worked well. But last night after I installed plugins like weather report & status & entrypaging, it got broken

I have removed the spamblock plugin and reinstalled it again, but it doesn't work. I am so confused...

[garvinhicking]

Hi atthink!

Your problem is that one of the plugins you installed as UTF-8 BOM marks in the language file which screw up the output of your blog.

Which language are you using, which charset, and which plugins do you have installed exactly since it broke? Only the ones you listed?

Then I can see in which language files the invalid characters are.

Regards,
Garvin

[atthink]

Hi Garvin:

My language is Traditional Chinese and charset is UTF-8.
Plugins I newly installed are:

(sidebar:)
recent comments
current weather report (now removed)
blog status (now removed)
Link List (now removed)
(events)
links to previous/next entry (now removed)

I am sorry I don't remember the full plugin name as it appeared in the plugin directory because after I removed the plugin I killed the directory by the way.

Thanks a lot!

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

I just searched in all plugins that are in our plugin repository, and those are the only ones with the "bad" BOMs:

serendipity_event_custom_permalinks/UTF-8/lang_bg.inc.php
serendipity_event_entrylastmodified/UTF-8/lang_bg.inc.php
serendipity_plugin_socialbookmarks/UTF-8/lang_de.inc.php
serendipity_plugin_socialbookmarks/UTF-8/lang_en.inc.php

I fixed those, but it does not seem you had one of them installed?

Did you maybe edit any of the language files yourself?

... ah! I think I found the culprit in the bundled serendipity files:

serendipity_event_xhtmlcleanup/UTF-8/lang_tn.inc.php

Can it be you installed that plugin?