Bugs and things to fix

[JoB]

we have to figure out why they're not showing up first, which is proving elusive.

FWIW: 19 of my newest 150 posts, 12 of the oldest 150, 1 of 5 PMs received.

If I may ask, is it established that it's always the same posts/PMs that fail to display across a) users and b) times / (re-)logins? The last white-out post I see right now in this thread is my own from 07-12-2014, 20:45:27.

[Nimphy]

FWIW: 19 of my newest 150 posts, 12 of the oldest 150, 1 of 5 PMs received.

If I may ask, is it established that it's always the same posts/PMs that fail to display across a) users and b) times / (re-)logins? The last white-out post I see right now in this thread is my own from 07-12-2014, 20:45:27.

Yes. I cannot see that either.

[Deirdre]

Neither can I, and the missing posts in other threads are also same every time. No, if data is stuck on the way here (and so seems the situation as described) it'll be always the same content missing.

[hushpiper]

We've confirmed that it's always the same posts, yes. If a post is appearing blank for one person, it will consistently appear blank for everybody all the time (they don't flicker in and out, for example). There don't seem to be any commonalities between which posts go missing either--not even the time of the posts seems to be consistent. We've got some disappearing as soon as they're posted, and some disappeared that were originally posted back in September. All the missing posts are in the database, and as far as I can tell there's no weird syntax errors/blank rows/etc associated with them (not that I'm very familiar with the simplemachines database structure). Piney tried posting a couple times in the same thread last night and it consistently came out empty for her as soon as she posted--I didn't think to test at the time whether she could post in other threads, but I think she can.

[Piney]

So, it seems that not only can I not post images, but I also can't quote people without my post disappearing...

[hushpiper]

So, it seems that not only can I not post images, but I also can't quote people without my post disappearing...

Confirmed: quotes breaks things. Nevermind, spoke too soon. The preview was blank, mind. Let's try out an image:

[Piney]

Confirmed: quotes breaks things. Nevermind, spoke too soon. The preview was blank, mind. Let's try out an image:

^Hmm, looks like I spoke too soon as well. Probably a just fluke for the one thing I tried to post before.

[Sunflower]

The forum is baack!
I don't know if it's of any help for you, but while the forum was down I got a lot of different error messages.

Firstthen
and then
Aand then again the first thing with the Guru. (I always imagine Guru Pathik...)

I couldn't even reach the Forum in the a.m. Chrome browser just said
It was timing out b/c taking too long to reach.
Plz excuse weird abbrevs; typing on my phone w/banana fingers.

[Sunflower]

We've confirmed that it's always the same posts, yes. If a post is appearing blank for one person, it will consistently appear blank for everybody all the time (they don't flicker in and out, for example). There don't seem to be any commonalities between which posts go missing either--not even the time of the posts seems to be consistent. We've got some disappearing as soon as they're posted, and some disappeared that were originally posted back in September. All the missing posts are in the database, and as far as I can tell there's no weird syntax errors/blank rows/etc associated with them (not that I'm very familiar with the simplemachines database structure). Piney tried posting a couple times in the same thread last night and it consistently came out empty for her as soon as she posted--I didn't think to test at the time whether she could post in other threads, but I think she can.

Thanks for all yr great work so far! I can confirm all eaten PMs are still eaten & no further existing PMs have vanished. (sent or received).

[Sunflower]

The good news:  We can now say "pussycat."

The bad news:  Some weird substitute command has taken every instance of the string "P-L-I-C" in my PMs and replaced it with "P-U-S-S-Y."  For example:
This is probably a compussy[glow]cat[/glow]ed problem -- can you repussy[glow]cat[/glow]e it?   

EDIT:  Let me stipulate that I spelled the above two words the right way, e.g. R-E-P-L-I-C-A-T-E.  So now we have proof that the substitution operates in regular posts too...

The Kitty Substitution has infected other words in my PM.  I was trying to say "R-E-C-I-P-R-O-C-A-T-I-N-G" and it came out:  recipussycating

Ohhh!  I see the problem!  Any time there's a string of "P----" immediately before C-A-T, Eich's Substitution Spell turns that P---- string into the formerly forbidden synonym for "kitty." 
Regardless of whether the author intended to say "kitty." 

[Sunflower]

FYI, my previous message (about Eich's Substitution Spell) *published* fine but wouldn't *preview*.  Aaargh.

This one does Preview, curiously.

[JoB]

Plz excuse weird abbrevs; typing on my phone w/banana fingers.

ObJoke ...

(... promptly doesn't preview.)

We've confirmed that it's always the same posts, yes. If a post is appearing blank for one person, it will consistently appear blank for everybody all the time (they don't flicker in and out, for example).

Hmmm. I take it that you tried restarting stuff as well (so that, if any temp contact-to-database errors led to empty posts getting cached in the actual forum software, they should've gotten flushed out)?

I would expect established forum s/w like SMF to have a rather elaborate database scheme where there's not only tables storing the content of the posts, but also index tables to speed up access to that data. Any idea whether that's the case and, if so, whether those indexes might have gotten damaged? Does SMF happen to provide tools to verify and/or repair its own database?

[JoB]

I just had a post getting white-outed immediately and started to re-edit and fuzz the content to see whether I can pinpoint the part that causes the effect. Both this post:

http://ssssforum.pcriot.com/index.php?topic=5.msg15278#msg15278

and the subsequent

http://ssssforum.pcriot.com/index.php?topic=5.msg15280#msg15280

were consistently affected as soon as the complete URL

h t t p : / / w w w . c h i l i - s h o p 2 4 . d e / g e s c h e n k i d e e n / 9 2 0 / s p l a t - c h i l i - z a h n p a s t a - s h o c k - e x t r a - s c h a r f

(double-spaced to prevent the effect) appeared towards their end, even when I finally tried to put it in as mere text, rather than as a [ u r l = ... ] .

P.S.: It would be possible, though, that SMF tried to make the URL into a link automatically until I butchered it beyond recognition.

[hushpiper]

ObJoke ...

(... promptly doesn't preview.)
Hmmm. I take it that you tried restarting stuff as well (so that, if any temp contact-to-database errors led to empty posts getting cached in the actual forum software, they should've gotten flushed out)?

I would expect established forum s/w like SMF to have a rather elaborate database scheme where there's not only tables storing the content of the posts, but also index tables to speed up access to that data. Any idea whether that's the case and, if so, whether those indexes might have gotten damaged? Does SMF happen to provide tools to verify and/or repair its own database?

(No preview on this one either.) Yes to all of the above. I did everything on this side that I could without being too intrusive, then slapped everything up on my own webspace here so that I could have a broken mirror I could break with impunity. (I also have a working version with the september backup here.) I updated SMF, ran repairs on the database, had it re-index, cleared the cache, turned off the cache... I don't remember what else, basically everything I could think of. SMF doesn't seem to have a database verification script that I can find, their advice for a bad db is just to always have a backup.

I had the same thought as you about indexes, and went looking around for a metadata table or something like that, but I didn't find one--and SMF's documentation on their database structure is sparse. I even grabbed the post ID of one of the older posts that disappeared and grepped through both the good and bad databases for any mention of it to compare, and both versions seemed to be identical. TBH tho, doing that manually is kind of brain-melting so there's a good chance I missed something. I'll be seeing if I can use grep|sdiff or an SQL query to do it more efficiently sometime today.

There does seem to be a tentative connection with quotes and/or links in the affected posts: not all posts with links/quotes have issues, but all the posts I checked with issues seem to have links/quotes. I haven't checked out any PMs to see if that's the case with them as well. Back to grep I go...

[JoB]

There does seem to be a tentative connection with quotes and/or links in the affected posts: not all posts with links/quotes have issues, but all the posts I checked with issues seem to have links/quotes.

And the post I kept editing in and out of existence turned out to have a link making the difference. Which would IMHO point to a (parsing?) problem in SMF, rather than a corrupt DB ...

Good DB (backup) with current SMF vs. "broken" DB under a downgraded SMF ... ? Or did the updates come with a DB schema change preventing that?