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help with lost replies?

Started by grannie, August 21, 2009, 07:58:08 PM

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grannie

Hi all, hoping someone can help me. I often have members' replies being lost or knocked out of a thread. It seems to happen when two members reply within seconds of each other, but not always. Sometimes one persons' reply will show up in the thread, then be lost when the next person posts.
Anyone have any useful suggestions? My girls are getting cranky :(

I am using 1.1.9

!Hachi!

any chances if anyone deleting it?check mod log in Admin CP.
did they posted succefully?sometimes post is not posted successfully like server connection failed etc.
     upgrade to smf 1.1.10 its more secure and its simple to upgrade .
Upgrade SMF.
regards
Happy Ramadan

grannie

I'll keep an eye on it and see if I can be more specific.

JimM

Definitely think about upgrading to 1.1.10.  It's an easy painless upgrade from 1.1.9.  You can accomplish it right through the package manager.

It almost sounds like a slow internet connection.  If one posted and the other didn't, are you seeing any errors generated?
Jim "JimM" Moore
Former Support Specialist

grannie

I've tried and tried to upgrade -- I have an area  with Install Actions (all saying test successful, whatever that means) and an Install Now button. When I click on that, I get this message
"The package was installed successfully. You should now be able to use whatever functionality it adds or changes; or not be able to use functionality it removes."

but the admin front page STILL asks me to upgrade, saying my forum version is 1.1.9 -- I am clearly doing something very wrong but I have no idea what it might be.

Also the posting issue seems to have resolved itself.

Norv

Perhaps you could check the permissions on your index.php page from the SMF folder (that is, the index.php which is directly into the directory where SSI.php and Settings.php are), and make sure it's writable.
On some servers that means 644 for files, or 664, or perhaps 666.

If it wasn't, then perhaps this was the problem with the other files as well. To see the list of files that the update to 1.1.10 needs to modify, please try checking out Admin > Packages, the "show files" link corresponding to the update package (I suppose it will now be available in ./Packages, if it was downloaded as it seems).
All those files listed there should be writable, before re-running the update.
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

MrPhil

You might want to check with your hosting service to see if database errors are being reported. If the problem is when two users try to post at almost the same time to the same topic, it might be a database overload of some sort. I don't think I've heard of this on any regular basis with SMF, but as it doesn't do atomic database transactions, if your database server is very slow, it might be intermixing one user's updating (writes to several tables) with another user's, resulting in a race condition and a lost post. Just a thought -- I haven't investigated the code, but it might have something to do with a very slow (overloaded?) database server.

If there's a good amount of time between posts, and the first post gets "knocked out", the above wouldn't apply. In that case, it's either a database server glitch, or someone has rights to delete a post -- can you tell if the first poster did a delete? I wouldn't think that they'd be complaining about lost posts if they themselves were doing the delete, but a rogue moderator (or a regular user who for some reason has moderator privileges) might be deleting some posts (a separate problem from that described above). That ought to be logged someplace, but offhand I don't know where. If the post problem has gone away, you may not want to pursue this for now, but if it comes back, you should look at the above concerns.

With the update problem, files (and some directories) need to be writable by PHP. Normally, directories are 755 and files 644 (except for read-only 444), but depending on how the server is configured (whether PHP and/or Apache are running as owner/you, your group, or as world/other), permissions may have to be 775/664 or even 777/666. Usually you start with 755/644 and wait for SMF to inform you that it can't write to a given directory or file. Then your change it to 775 (or 664) and try again. Third time should be the charm with 777 (or 666), but change them back to 755/644 when you're done updating (for security purposes).

If you're getting all the way through without any error message that an update failed, or SMF couldn't write a directory or file, that's very strange. No messages anywhere? Site error log? SMF admin error log? PHP error_log files in various SMF directories? It's your forum version that's 1.1.9, not your database version? By any chance, did you make some edit to the following line in index.php:
$forum_version = 'SMF 1.1.9';
such that the updater couldn't change it? Does it still say 1.1.9 there? In the admin section you can compare your file versions with the latest (up to 1.1.10) version and see if any are reported to be out of date. My site is offline right now or I'd tell you the exact steps to take. I'm wondering if index.php is the only one out of date, or was updated except for the $forum_version line. When you run your forum, at the very bottom of the page what does it say the version is?

grannie

I dont understand ALL of what you posted but I checked the error log, and from what I read in there my guess is that I need to change write permissions in the database. I'll have a look at that later when I am not brushing small children off my legs.
I dont get any error messages or anything similar coming up on the forum, which I would have expected to see if the update didnt process but I will see what happens when I change the permissions and run the update.

thanks for the tips, guys.

Norv

Please note that the permissions on the files cannot be changed in the database, but on each of the files (or folders, or their parent folder), in your FTP account. If you use a FTP client like FileZilla, you might try right clicking on a file like index.php from the forum directory, and check its permissions.

It is strange that you are not getting errors, but I've seen it before (rarely though), it might be related to the permissions on files as we suspect.
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

grannie

thanks for that, trying it now.

grannie

OK let's pretend I am a middle aged woman with no clue what to do *wink*

I looked at several files within FileZilla and didnt get any options to do anything at all with permissions apart from making them read-only which I am thinking is probably not right. But I am nervous of making things worse by not understanding fully what it is I am trying to do.

Anyway I have a bunch of screenshots here to show what happens when I try to upgrade. I hope it is ok to post them and I also HOPE I have managed to blackout anything that shouldnt be here... if not will some kind person please remove the posts?








now if I go back to the admin centre I am told once again that an update version is available and that my forum version is 1.1.9 -- as per the first screenshot.

So here is a copy of the error log




MrPhil

Oooh, a Windoze server. The default settings should be that everything is read-write, unless you've done something to set read-only on folders or files. Have you gone over your folders and files, looking for anything marked "read-only"? It seems to think that wwwroot/index.php is read-only (and that's the file that, among other things, contains the $forum_version string). I'm not too familiar with that server, so that's about as much advice as I can give.

grannie

hmmmnn OK I will take a look at thm all and see what happens.

Thanks.

JimM

Any update on this?  Are you still experiencing this issue?
Jim "JimM" Moore
Former Support Specialist

grannie

Sorry -- for personal reasons I left that forum, I have no idea whether the problem was solved or not, but I do thank you for your time and patient responses.

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