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Re: Problem with the calendar, 'fast quote' and registration.

Started by TetsuoS, December 25, 2006, 07:10:37 PM

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TetsuoS

I visited a forum today which I occasionally admin. They had a problem of it no longer displaying the board index. All threads could still be visited and all boards also, but no longer the board index.

This forum houses a lot of modifications, but nothing had been changed to any of them for over a week and the problem occured only today/yesterday.

Appearently the problem was located in the calendar (after some searching in many extra functionalities displayed on the boardindex and disabling them one oafter the other). I disabled it and the boardindex displayed normally.

There are no aditional modifications related to the calendar. There were no extra events on the 25th, besides Christmas and 1 birthday.

Disabling the calendar ca only be considered a temporary solution. Any ideas what may be/have been causing the problem.


The error displayed in a browser when the calendar is enabled is something like:

"Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /www/forum.nitescifi.com/Sources/Subs.php on line 280"


This indicates a line in the db-query function, which was obviously not at fault, since it gets called all the time when checking posts.

Any help on the reason why the calendar causes this error and what can be done to prevent it would be appreciated.


edit:

I have determined that the calendar works fine as long as the date of the displayed events does not cross over into 2007. Once the amount of days to show in advance is set so it shows 7 days (=untill 1st), it malfunctions. There is only Newyear as holiday and 6 ordinary birthdays. The calendar itself (calendar.template.php call) works/displays fine btw, it only causes problems on the board index.


Does this help shed light on the problem?


EDIT: Extra problems and info posted below, any help wanted and appreciated...

jerm

SMF Version?
Mods installed?
Theme?

TetsuoS

#2
Ah, ok, sorry about the lack of info:

SMF 1.1.1

Mods:
1.   TinyPortal   0.97
2.   Treasury   1.2
3.   Ad Managment   2.0
4.   Signature Settings Mod   1.0
5.   vMulticolor-Stars Mod   0.99
6.   Googlebot & Spiders Mod   2.0.2
7.   BBC Permission Mod   1.0
8.   Streaming 3   4.2.2b
9.   Global Announcements   1.0
10.   vReportBoard Mod   0.97
11.   Merge Double Posts   1.0.6
12.   Karma Description Mod   2.2
13.   Topic Ratings   1.03
14.   Reason For Editing Mod   1.13
15.   Users Online Today Mod   1.4.0
16.   New Topic Button   1.0
17.   Rename Topic   1.0.2
18.   PM On Registration   1.0.2
19.   ShowTopics   1.1
20.   Moderator Activity Report   1.1b
21.   Spoiler Tag   0.3.0
22.   SMF Staff Page   1.3
23.   SMF Links   1.6.3
24.   SMF 1.1.1 Update Package   1.1.1

Theme: Tiger Eye, but this theme uses the default boardindex display, so as far as the boardindex is concerned, you could say it's the default theme.


One of the things I tried disabling, was users online today (just commented it out), didn't help. Googlebot and spiders disabling (from the admin panel) didn't help either. There is no other mod that displays anything on the boardindex (not even the ad management).

I checked over what was changed in the smf 1.1.1 update (compared to 1.1, since that is what all mods were installed), but the changes didn't directly affect any areas with modifications in it.

One other piece of information I can add, is that it is a converted forum, it used to be a QSF forum, but we converted it to an SMF forum with the converter available in the download section. It is running perfectly fine, except for this calendar/boardindex problem, which is only now showing up.

I have temporarily set the number of days in advance to display, to just 3, so now it works again, but probably only for a few days (3 days before NewYear).

If it completely dissapears after NewYear, 'till the next NewYear, then it's not a very big problem, but if it doesn't, then we have a serious problem.

Appreciate your help! :)

TetsuoS

#3
Well, I have some info on this, nothing really usefull, but anyway.

The issue is not present on a different forum I use to test things, the only difference I can come up with is the fact that this other forum was not previously a QSF forum, so I figure it must have something to do with the conversion...

I just hope it goes away after the New Year.

TetsuoS

Okay, New Year has passed and we still have the problem. The calendar can be enabled, but if we wish to show it on the boardindex, it times out with the above error message, so we can only display events in the calendar itself.

Another issue that may or may not be related to this that cropped up is the quote.

If fast reply is enable and the box is showing, then normally, if you press quote, it fills in the quote in the fastreply box. Now it only shows loading and doesn't fill it in. Could this be related to the same time out issue? What's weird though, is that, if the fast reply box is closed, the quote button does correctly bring up the quote in the reply window screen.

Again, any help on either one of the issue above is very much appreciated.
We have no idea on where to look for a cause of this problem.

TetsuoS

Another problem has cropped up, again related to these others in a strange way I figure.

The registration of the site no longer functions. The part that is causing the problem, is the visual verification, it is simply not showing the images it is supposed to (audio is not working either).

People could still register on the 30th of December 2006. Ever since the 31st, we haven't had a single new member, now I know why... Registration is non-functional. Since there were other date: year=2007 problems (descibed above) and they started to appear all around the New Year, I figure this date-year, must have something to do with it (though I haven't the slightest idea what).

Not getting any new members is a serious problem (a workaround could be to disable the visual verification for now, but we'd still like to see the entire problem resolved).

If anybody has any idea where all these problems come from, please give us a hand (I'm getting desperate).
Maybe the combination of problems rings a bell for somebody?

As a sidenote, the last modification was installed around 15th of December while the first problems only started to appear around the end of the year. Registration worked perfectly up untill the 30th, since that day we still had 6 new members registering (about 110/month average for December as a whole). However, nothing was changed since about the 15th, so it can't be code in a mod doing all this on a 15 day delay, right? It's just too much of a coincidence that all problems start occuring when the year reads 2007 and all is fine in 2006...

TetsuoS

Found yet another feature that is not working: "preview post"...

It seems most actions that are not working are related to dynamically fetching something.

--

Just posting all the problems we find, just so that maybe somebody sees a link in the combination of problems and can point in the right direction for a solution...

TFMF

In order to allow people to register on our board we had to disable Visual Verification (because it's not working as TetsuoS said) and because of this we are getting an increasing number of SpamBots appearing on and posting.

It's getting quite serious.

TetsuoS

More info:

the feature are still not working, we haven't found a solution.

Something very weird though:

the mentioned features don't function on: Opera 8.x, Opera 9.x, Firefox 1.x, Firefox 2.x, IE7, IE6

BUT

They do function correctly on IE 5.5.

How's that for weirdness? Anybody have a clue what the cause could be, PLEASE let us know.

Thanks. :)

TetsuoS

Again an update, it appears to be a problem with the server, though that too is still early speculation (lighttpd).

Anyone have this happen to them before?

lighttpd on our server appearently recently started adding some random chars in front of all binary data it sends and that could be causing the problems?

attachements all download corrupted, but via ftp they are fine.

I know this isn't exactly the right place to ask, but it was related to this problem and you never know...

metallica48423

Hi, i apoligize for the lack of a reply to this topic.

Since these errors originally popped up, as of February 10th, Version 1.1.2 of SMF has been released. 

I cannot be certain, but i feel and believe that this is a mod conflict, given the number of mods installed, As all of the above features work on my board perfectly fine.

I would suggest downloading the 1.1.2 upgrade package, uploading everything in it to replace all files with fresh unmodified files, and then running upgrade.php to upgrade your database.  There were many bugfixes in this release and also a security patch.

Please let us know how this goes -- as it may fix the issue.  I would suggest reinstalling mods (you may need to get the newest versions -- check http://custom.simplemachines.org to see if they've been updated, if not please post in the topic for the mod and request it be upgraded.)
Justin O'Leary
Ex-Project Manager
Ex-Lead Support Specialist

QuoteMicrosoft wants us to "Imagine life without walls"...
I say, "If there are no walls, who needs Windows?"


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