indexing/page not found problem with The Bar

[BoxaRox]

tried this yet??

from phpbb documentation:

3.1.1.4: Resync

Some information in the database is contained it multiple tables. This makes the board run faster by reducing the number of database queries on some pages. Sometimes the information in different tables of the database gets out of sync. This usually is caused by a connection problem which interrupts updating of the database.

When this happens, your forum may start behaving in a strange way. Links to topics or posts that don't exist are common symptoms of this problem.

If you are having this problem, you can fix it by clicking Resync in the General Forum Settings Panel. This will recalculate the forum information based on the actual posts that exist. This operation has no harmful effect on the forums, just generates a small amount of overhead while you are doing it. This is a good thing to try if you are not sure what is causing a problem on your board.

[spectabillis]

fuck, i bet thats a big part of it. the errors the php functions have been spitting is usually from the mysql backend, and with functions that seem a natural fit to be implemented with indexes.

happen to know if there is a schema graphic?

[thisisthatwhichis]

As long as it is not used beer, can I have another.
So as far as the bug goes, am I correct in assuming that all of the necessary data is available, but there is no time or interest to fix it. Times sure change. When I was programming, if there was a problem in my code, I did not sleep until I got it fixed. This must be code of someone that is no longer available for whatever reason and the support staff just does not want to dig.

Support staff? BAHAHAHAAA!!! There ain't nobody driving this bus. We're just lucky to be on a relatively straight road. Hopefully it will last long enough for me or someone else to get to the front and figure out how to work the controls.

I've been using this board for years and have never heard of this bug. Then again, I pretty much never visit these huge threads. I went through 6 pages and still don't quite understand what you guys are saying.

If someone could explain what's going on in this bug reports thread (or a new thread if you'd like) I'd appreciate it:
viewtopic.php?t=15360

This problem has been happening in the Bar Thread for several months now.
After the 15th post on each page, everyone recieves an error "NO POSTS EXIST FOR THIS TOPIC". The page counter for the thread has pre-maturely advanced. In order to read posts 16-30, you have to click on the previous page in the counter. Then when the 1st post for the pre-maturely advanced page hits, the thread works OK.... until post 16 again.

Hope that helps.....

[stargeezer]

The symtom is similar to what would happen if you exceeded a 16 bit unsigned integer and switched modes to a floating point number, but the data shows that the problem started well after that. If it were the integer problem, it should have happened somewhere around post 65536, but that occured back in July. The problem on the bar thread appeared in either late September or October. Since I post only rarely, I can provide no additional hints at this time.

[Dork]

Ok... there are a bunch of different theories floating around about this one and I don't think any are correct.

When a message is posted, records are inserted into several different tables, two of them being POSTS and POSTS_TEXT. What appears to be happening here is that occasionally, there is no record in POSTS_TEXT. Some queries join to this table, some don't so they get different numbers of posts.

They are coming from legitimate, active, well loved (well, some of them anyway) posters, not spammers. I have no idea why this is happening yet or how to fix it but I'll resume digging later. Maybe a mysql error happened in the middle of a post so it didn't complete? I dunno. My brain is fried.

[Dork]

One specific instance of a bad message I looked into happened right before the last post here:
viewtopic.php?t=7141&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=68130

It was then followed by many posts talking about how Eplaya had been down, lots of duplicate messages, etc. Kind of makes my pet theory about mysql errors while posting seem reasonable. Still not sure how I want to fix it yet.

[spectabillis]

When a message is posted, records are inserted into several different tables, two of them being POSTS and POSTS_TEXT. What appears to be happening here is that occasionally, there is no record in POSTS_TEXT. Some queries join to this table, some don't so they get different numbers of posts.

hmm... i still dont know what the resync thing was in the first place, but i wonder if part of it did referential checks and corrected mis-matches?

[Dork]

hmm... i still dont know what the resync thing was in the first place, but i wonder if part of it did referential checks and corrected mis-matches?

The sync counts the messages in each topic and updates that value. The problem is, that value was always right so re-counting didn't change anything. What is happening is when you view the messages, it does a different count and finds a smaller number because some of the messages are corrupt. I need to either remove the offending messages or change the queries so the counts match.

[spectabillis]

dunno how the sql looks, but deleting the bad posts would probably only be a temp fix. but deleting offending posts? dude, that would be about a third the total posts on this board - including mine!


ed: j/k, i know what you mean.

[emily sparkle]

yeah, i tried a couple of resyncs quite a while ago when the problem first came up without any change. i think the corruption occurs when we remove a post that is at the beginning or end of a page-count.

[Dork]

Ok, I looked again with a clear head and there were 73 bad posts. 4 were from long ago, the rest were all from August 18th so I don't think it's a recurring problem requiring some big coding project. I removed the posts and did a resync which I *think* have fixed it.

Please start posting in the bar again and let me know how it goes

[PurpleKoosh]

You rock like an entire geology department.

[Bay Bridge Sue]

Dork rocks like a whole fucking asteroid belt!!!!!!

bb

[DVD Burner]

Ok, I looked again with a clear head and there were 73 bad posts. 4 were from long ago, the rest were all from August 18th so I don't think it's a recurring problem requiring some big coding project. I removed the posts and did a resync which I *think* have fixed it.

Please start posting in the bar again and let me know how it goes

Brilliant.

The server went down then.

Nice catch. You really are on it.

Hat's off to you!