Members having trouble viewing board index and PM inbox problems

[sjampoo]

Our members started to have trouble viewing our forum; There is no or a damaged boardindex / frontpage and the PM inbox seems empty.
As an admin I have no trouble viewing or posting on the forum, So at first I thought it must be a single member with a computer problem.

Turns out all members were having trouble.
As an Admin the only thing that's broken is my PM inbox. There are no messages to be seen.  the Outbox is fine.  I can send PM's and I will receive a notification that I have new messages, but the inbox appears empty.

I have PhpMyAdmin access, and I can see all tables, no errors. I can even find the PM's I send to myself etc etc.  So database looks 'okay' as in: It contains all information you would normally expect to be there. Through the PhpMyAdmin -> Operations option I've checked the tables, but they all seem fine.


The problems started around the time our ISP restarted the MySQL server, but this should/would/could not be the problem according to the ISP. They did another restart just to be sure. But this didn't help: My PM box is still empty.
I did put the forum in maintenance mode within an hour, so users can't use the board and the error of the damaged board-index is now not to be reproduced, since only  normal members are effected. The admins are seeing the PM inbox problem, so my guess is that as long as my PM box is malfunctioning, the board-index will also still be malfunctioning for the normal members.



Software: 1.1.16 at the time the first errors where noticed.  I checked for updates and installed 1.1.17 and 1.1.18 just fine through the admin-control-panel.

- repair_settings.php -> no effect
- forum maintenance -> optimize tables, find and repair errors etc etc: no effect ( no errors found, tables optimized )

Where to start?

We had minor troubles before, but has been well for a very long period now.

Software: 1.1.18
Mods: No big mods. Coppermine brigde, anti-spam-capcha, language pack
Recent changes: None what so ever.


--

Versie-informatie:
Forumversion: SMF 1.1.18
Current SMF-version: SMF 1.1.18
PHP-version: 5.3.16
MySQL-version: 5.1.66-cll-lve
Serverversion: Apache
GD-version: bundled (2.0.34 compatible)

[kat]

Where to start?

A URL to a page or three, where this is happening, so we can take a look, perhaps?

You'll need to take it out of Maintenance mode and make it accessible for guest-viewing, obviously. We won't be able to check the PM thing, either.

Have you tried Forum maintenance and doing the ol' "Repair" thing?

[sjampoo]

Where to start?

A URL to a page or three, where this is happening, so we can take a look, perhaps?

You'll need to take it out of Maintenance mode and make it accessible for guest-viewing, obviously. We won't be able to check the PM thing, either.

Have you tried Forum maintenance and doing the ol' "Repair" thing?

Both maintenance and the good old repair_settings.php. 
AND via phpmyadmin -> analyse, repair, optimize tables etc etc: No errors found.

I'm not fond of turning the maintenance mode off, since I've got a lot of users hammering the site to see if we're back online yet.

We'll be working on a local version and try if we can fix it with a) a major upgrade instead of the small upgrades or b) a fresh install + current database or c) upgrade to 2.0 ?? (needle/haystack)

[kat]

Well, without being able to see anything, we're kinda working blind.

One thing, though. One would assume that everything was fine. Then, suddenly, this started going squiffy.

The big question is, what was done, just prior to that?

You say that your host restarted the server. OK, fine. But, did they just reboot it? Or, as seems likely, did they restart it in their equivalent of "Reset to factory default settings"?

For example, was "mod_security" enabled, when it was, before the cockup reset, disabled?

Did the CHOWN permissions go back to their default and was/is that default denying you full CHOWN ownership of your files?

From where I'm seeing things, this is all "Host" and nothing "SMF".

Give 'em another slap.

[sjampoo]

We've made a complete 1 on 1 copy on a local server... and guess what: Running fine. No problems at all.
Differences are minor:
- PHP-version: 5.3.6 vs 5.3.16
- mysql-version: 5.0.8 vs 5.1.63

Only the smf_sessions table produced some 'duplicates' errors, which had been cleared out on the 'live' database as well. 

Now we contacted our ISP if they know what's wrong on their server side. Why did they perform a reboot friday night, can they (temporarily) turn on PHP and MySQL logging (and hand over the output) etc etc.

Not marked as solved yet, will keep you posted

[kat]

[sjampoo]

We moved our stuff to another ISP.

Tada. online again. (www.g40.nl)

Not completely working yet, but still. our former ISP is still claiming they don't have any problems, and are not pro-active in searching for a solution.
The fact that trouble started for us the very moment they did a version bump + restart on their MySQL server, doesn't bother them at all it seems.

[kat]

It's like everything else, I guess.

There are good hosts and bad hosts.


Sadly, there seem to be more of the latter...