The message body was left empty - if over 5130 characters

Started by General_Naga, May 16, 2009, 12:48:06 PM

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General_Naga

I'm getting a "The message body was left empty." error when trying to edit a large post. It's ok as long as I don't go over 5130 characters at which point the error appears.

The forum setting for character limit is set to 20,000 - increasing the value makes no difference.

Has anyone ever come across this before? How can I solve it?

Thanks in advance.

karlbenson

It might be a php limit (rougly limiting you to 5kb $_POST)

Please can link to a phpinfo() file.

General_Naga

#2
<link removed>

please let me know when you've checked for what you want as I'd like to remove it asap for security. :)

Thanks

karlbenson

hmmm.
I can't see much wrong in that.

What modifications are you using?

General_Naga

#4
Spoiler Tag      0.6a
Member Color Link    3.0.6
jQLightbox    0.5
The Rules    1.06
Member Color Link    3.0.5
Pm_Informer    2.0
PDF Tag    1.1
Enhanced Dropdown    1.1
[user] BBC Tag    1.0.1
Reflection Avatar    1.1
Age,Gender,Location on Registation    1.1
Ajax History Graph    0.1.2
Users Online Today    1.5.4
Pm_Informer    1.0
Member Color Link    3.0.5a
Integrate Lightbox    1.6
Default Avatar    1.1.1
PM Readed    1.0
Users Online Today    1.5.2
English British Spelling Of Centre & Colour BBCode    1.1
reCAPTCHA for SMF    0.9.5.4a
Referrals Mod    2.2.6
Look But No Read    1.0
Time and Date Online Remover    1.0
Excellent Smileys    1.0
Auto Email Inactive Users    1.7
Aeva ~ Auto-Embed Video & Audio    6.2.75
Board Sort Methods

So quite a lot really ;) - I've already disabled Aeva as I saw some mention of a video mod bug causing a similar problem - that was before I discovered the character limit though.

EDIT: Just to add I haven't installed any new ones very recently so I'm not sure it's a mod causing a problem.

General_Naga

As you can imagine this is quite crippling for a forum which needs posts over this size. Does anyone know how I can fix it?

General_Naga

I've installed a fresh version of SMF on the same database and the problem is replicated on the second install. Would any of the devs know of any phpMyAdmin commands which might fix the issue?

Thaks

N3RVE

Is this issue solved or do you still require assistance?
Are they any errors in the forum/server error log?

-[n3rve]
Ralph "[n3rve]" Otowo
Former Marketing Co-ordinator, Simple Machines.
ralph [at] simplemachines [dot] org                       
Quote"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." - Carl Sagan

General_Naga

I still need help please :)

There aren't any errors in the logs which could be related (they're template errors which I'm already aware of)

General_Naga

I eventually threw in the towel on my old host which was being decidedly unhelpful and have changed hosting.

I managed to import the database and get all the catagories, boards, posts, members & membergroups.

I'm still getting this problem though.

I'm also getting a strange issue where as soon as I read an old thread it gets marked as "new" and therefore highlights the board. If I try marking all threads as "read" it highlights everything as being "new".

Can anyone help me with either issue?


General_Naga

After further investigation it would appear the problem is caused by having too many BBcode entries in a single message. By removing some of them I was able to increase the message size enough.

How can I increase this limit?

Is the character limit calculated in BBcode or the parsed output?

H

By default the only character limit should be that set by the database, which I believe is currently 65535 characters per post and ofcourse the setting in the admin area, that you've already checked.

Any other limitations must be caused by a server configuration issue of some sort. If you try posting a long post here, or on any other SMF board I doubt you will be able to replicate the problem.

Who is your host?
Generally there should be no major security issues caused by phpinfo, so it would probably make the most sense to leave the link in this topic until the link is resolved :). There are many people who may be able to suggest additional fixes if they can view it
-H
Former Support Team Lead
                              I recommend:
Namecheap (domains)
Fastmail (e-mail)
Linode (VPS)
                             

General_Naga

Thanks H, I wasn't sure :)

I've actually switched host since this problem first arose. The problem persisted though when I tried posting exactly the same message as before that was before I restored my database or installed any mods.

PHPInfo Here

My new host is InMotion my old one was eUKHost

Thanks

JBlaze

Hello, just going through some old support topics. Do you still require assistance with this issue?

If so, please reply with more information about what isn't working.

Additionally, if this is already solved, please mark it solved by clicking 'Mark Topic Solved' at the lower left of your screen.
Jason Clemons
Former Team Member 2009 - 2012

General_Naga

Nope hasn't been solved yet but can be worked around. Basically the problem is that by adding a lot of BBcode to a topic the character limit appears to drop so it prevents you posting unless you delete some of the BBcode or text.

What's more strange is the error you get is "The message body was left empty" and not a too many characters error. The problem was persistent on both my old and new hosts with clean and restored databases.

Forum Address: http://twmod.org/Forums
PHP Info: http://twmod.org/phpinfo.php

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Rumbaar

When you say 5130 characters long, is that plain text 5130 characters?  Can you link to the applicable post?

When you say those that include a lot of BBCode, what do you call a lot?  Some BBCode turns into a lot more characters stored in the message field of the database than what is displayed/used to create the displayed outcome.

For example:
[u]underline[/u] = <span class="bbc_u">underline</span>

So 16 characters turns into 36.  So for that ~5130 post you are trying to edit, what is it's character count via the actual field contents in your phpMyAdmin messages table?
"An important reward for a job well done is a personal sense of worthwhile achievement."

[ Themes ]

Norv

Can you also eventually check out your webserver log, and post here the errors, to see if there may be something of relevance?
To-do lists are for deferral. The more things you write down the later they're done... until you have 100s of lists of things you don't do.

File a security report | Developers' Blog | Bug Tracker


Also known as Norv on D* | Norv N. on G+ | Norv on Github

General_Naga

Nothing appears in the cpanel error log which can have any relevance (as I know and understand the cause of what's there)

I did consider that as the problem Rumbaar however I increased the size of the character limit to 20000 with no effect - which made me think there must be a limit on the amount of BBcode. I also tried manually increasing the limit even higher in phpmyadmin - with no effect either.

Rumbaar

Are you able to post the same post in another SMF forum?   Increasing the character limit will have no affect on the fields db space limit.  But you've said you've increased that, how did you do so?
"An important reward for a job well done is a personal sense of worthwhile achievement."

[ Themes ]

General_Naga

I honestly can't remember as it was some time ago and I followed instructions on a forum which seems to have gone offline now. I think I just changed the type of field.

We recently migrated server so I had a chance to try it out on a completely clean install on a different host - same thing happened.

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