Search only works after "Clear Logs"

[sumocomputers]

Running SMF 1.1.1 with the default theme and no mods.

We had a lot of complaints about search over the last couple months. Basically you can put in an exact keyword that you know should have several results (with or without quotes) and you get a lot of irrelevant results that do not have that keyword in them, intermixed with the correct ones (highlighted yellow).

So I have tried all combinations of weighting, index tables (fulltext & all 3 custom), and other various admin search option check boxes, thinking something would work.  Nothing worked.

I decided to do some forum maintenace, and although I am not 100% which step it is, I am pretty sure that "Optimize all tables..." fixes the search to work pretty much perfectly.  The problem is, in only holds for maybe a couple hours I think.

I will repost here more as I narrow it down, but just wondered if anyone else had such issues, or if there is some possible root cause for this that I can start looking at?  Or is this just the nature of the beast? We have 21073 Posts in 1412 Topics by 1017 Members.  We have been up for about a year.

Thanks

Chris

[sumocomputers]

Just an update:

Once the search starts returning irrelevant results, I invoke "Empty out unimportant logs" and attempt another search. At this point search returns nothing for the keyword.  Then I invoke "Optimize all tables to improve performance."  Now I attempt another exact search, and it is perfect - only relevant search results are returned.

A couple of hours later, the search starts malfunctioning again!

Arrrrrgggghhhh!

[jerm]

Is there anything in your error log?

[sumocomputers]

Is there anything in your error log?

Well, not right now, it is empty.  I guess that is maybe because I selected "Empty out unimportant logs"?  Not sure if that is considered important or not...

I will watch it for the next bit and when the search starts failing I will check the log.

[sumocomputers]

OK, still no errors in my log, however I have a more narrowed steps to reproduce.

Once the search starts returning irrelevant results, I invoke "Empty out unimportant logs" and attempt another search. At this point search returns nothing for the keyword.

Now I just search for some other keyword and the results are correct.  Then I search again for the first keyword and the results are also correct.

So I DO NOT need to perform the "Optimize..." step.  It is somehow related to emptying out the unimportant log.

Still it seems a couple hours later it goes back to incorrect behavior...

[sumocomputers]

Regarding the log - it looks like one user had lost connection to the database for load.php, and it seems that it might correlate to when the search function breaks.

Of course "Empty out unimportant logs" fixes it every time, but only for a short period of time (usually hours).

Does anyone have any help!!!???


Thanks

[KGIII]

Hi,

I am going through the old unsolved support topics. Did you get this resolved? If not then please let us know what you have tried since. Are you upgraded to the latest version? What are your current search settings?

[sumocomputers]

I upgraded to 1.1.2, re-ran all the maintenance, still same issue.

"Empty out important logs" fixes it every time - but only for a short time.

So I gave up completely - search is just broken somehow.

[KGIII]

What are the settings for search? (Added in the newer versions.) Did you build a database and force it to use that?

[sumocomputers]

I have tried "No Index", "Full Index", and "Custom Index".

I have tried "Force the use of a search Index" both on and off in conjunction with the above latter 2.

I have tried "Match Whole words only" both on and off.

I have tried Simple and Advanced search.

I have tried dozens of weighting combinations.

- All with the same result.

[KGIII]

I have seen a few other posts with what appears to be the same issue. Not a whole lot but, well, a few. It may be time to call in a developer? Do you have a phpinfo.php file available should it be requested?

[sumocomputers]

Not sure where that file would live, but...

This SMF site is on a hosted account, and currently only have FTP/SSH access to the files - nothing on the database or domain admin side of things (although I may be able to get this access).

I hope that is clear enough.

[metallica48423]

http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=479.msg688#msg688

That should help you outon the phpinfo.php thing

[sumocomputers]

I have seen a few other posts with what appears to be the same issue. Not a whole lot but, well, a few. It may be time to call in a developer? Do you have a phpinfo.php file available should it be requested?

OK - got phpinfo figured out.

[SleePy]

sumocomputers,

Sorry for the delayed response.
Do you know if your mysql user for SMF has the ability to create temp tables? I seen this issue occur with this as the tables are not being deleted once smf is done using the temp tables.

[drumsage]

I too have experienced the Search results to be quite poor. And like some of you here, performing the Empty Out Unimportant Logs does improve the performance of the search results.

[drumsage]

Has anyone seen or found a real solution to this problem. I continue to daily use the Empty Out Unimportant Logs function, which temporarily solves the problem, but this not a realistic solution.

[drumsage]

Just a simple "we are working on a solution" or "it won't be fixed until the next update" would suffice. 

[metallica48423]

Can't work on a solution unless we know what the cause of the problem is first.  Only one of the dev's knows the search functionality extensively.

I can say that search is being reviewed and looked at.  There has been no determination of anything to my knowledge yet.

Was your board a conversion?
PHP version?
MySQL version?

[drumsage]

Was your board a conversion?
PHP version?
MySQL version?

My board was a conversion ... some time ago, maybe two years ago. Originally YaBB, then SuperMod, then SMF.

MySQL: 4.1
PHP: 5.0

I created a Custom Index for the search method; the table is about 240Mb.