Topic: Can't change thread alert settings in 2.1rc2

[m4z]

Hi (hope this isn't a duplicate)!

In my private installation, when I view a thread and want to change the notification settings by clicking on the top or bottom "No alerts or emails" button and choose any of the four available options, I see a huge "Loading..." banner at the top of the page and nothing further happens (when reloading after a while, the setting hasn't changed). Subscribing to boards works fine.

My admin log contains the following two errors:
First:

• Type of error: Critical
• The database value you're trying to insert does not exist: 0
  Function: TopicNotify
  
• https://[my-forum]/index.php?action=notifytopic;topic=38;mode=3;[hexstring]=[hexstring];xml
• /home/[smf-user]/public_html/Sources/Notify.php (Line 145)

Second:

• Type of error: General
• The database value you're trying to insert does not exist: 0
• https://[my-forum]/index.php?action=notifytopic;topic=38;mode=3;[hexstring]=[hexstring];xml

The code section mentioned in the first error is this:

Code: [Select]

   138: $smcFunc['db_insert']($insert ? 'insert' : 'replace',
   139: '{db_prefix}log_topics',
   140: array(
   141: 'id_member' => 'int', 'id_topic' => 'int', 'id_msg' => 'int', 'unwatched' => 'int',
   142: ),
   143: $log,
   144: array('id_member', 'id_topic')
==>145: );

When I inspect my action in Chromium, I see a XHR with a response of 500:

Request headers:

Code: [Select]

GET /index.php?action=notifytopic;topic=38;mode=3;[hexstring]=[hexstring];xml HTTP/1.1
Host: [my-forum]
Connection: keep-alive
Accept: */*
DNT: 1
X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3809.132 Safari/537.36
Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors
Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin
Referer: https://[my-forum]/index.php?topic=38.msg125;boardseen
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9,de-DE;q=0.8,de;q=0.7,es-ES;q=0.6,es;q=0.5,ru-RU;q=0.4,ru;q=0.3
Cookie: SMFCookie[number]=[stuff1][my-forum][morestuff1]; PHPSESSID=[evenmorestuff1]; SMFCookie[number]=[stuff2][another-forum-on-another-subdomain][morestuff2]; PHPSESSID=[evenmorestuff2]

Response (invisible to the user):

Code: [Select]

<div id="fatal_error">
<div class="cat_bar">
<h3 class="catbg">
An error has occurred
</h3>
</div>
<div class="windowbg">
<div class="padding">
The database value you're trying to insert does not exist: 0
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="centertext">
<a class="button" href="javascript:document.location=document.referrer">Back</a>
</div>

[d3vcho]

I couldn't replicate the error. Are you using RC2 or latest GitHub build?

[m4z]

RC2 (plus some manual bugfixes in one of the two installations I tested this in). Will try to get a full picture, maybe update (most likely no today)...

[d3vcho]

You should use latest GitHub build. RC2 was released a few months ago and there has been a lot of work done in 2.1.

[m4z]

Yeah, haven't had time yet to look into release/update management (or even to set up backups) for my staging and production forums. Are there any docs on best practices, or should I just put my staging and prod forum dirs into different git branches?

[d3vcho]

There are no docs for that. We just recommend not to use SMF 2.1 on production sites because as it's an under-development version, you may encounter errors and bugs. Although some people decide to run it, it depends on your skills in general. There are some people that maintain their production sites up to the latest GitHub build, some others up to the latest release (RC2 in our case)... It just depends on what do you want and what how much are you willing to risk based on your skills.

If you have 2 sites and one of them is in production, I would recommend sticking with RC2 in the production one and keep the other one updated with latest GitHub build as a playground.

[m4z]

We just recommend not to use SMF 2.1 on production sites because as it's an under-development version, you may encounter errors and bugs. Although some people decide to run it, it depends on your skills in general. There are some people that maintain their production sites up to the latest GitHub build, some others up to the latest release (RC2 in our case)... It just depends on what do you want and what how much are you willing to risk based on your skills.

Yeah, I think I know what I'm doing (and have seen and reported my share of bugs), although I'm not strong and PHP and always short on time.
My small user group was involved in the decision and preferred being beta testers. (Also, "production" in my case just means "a bunch of friends needed a private forum for a hobby", no SLAs or anything, just unpaid volunteer work.)

If you have 2 sites and one of them is in production, I would recommend sticking with RC2 in the production one and keep the other one updated with latest GitHub build as a playground.

The point of the staging or "beta" forum is to be exactly the same as the production site, only with less users and no (precious) content, to test any small to major change before touching the production forum.
I'll try to update my third, previously unmentioned, throw-away "alpha" forum to HEAD once I've figured out a way to manage my changes (I will probably just put the forum dirs into different git branches later this month, to be able to cherry-pick file changes across them, and because I have no better idea right now).

[m4z]

My problem persists in the current Github ("release-2.1" branch) HEAD (6ba1e53c0b65edb202fa17b9dc0088f610fdbfd8, 2019-09-01).

[shawnb61]

I cannot replicate this - either under RC2 or the current github, in my WAMP or Linux environments. 

Could you copy the support info from under Admin | Main | Support & Credits?  That would provide the mysql & php versions. 

Do you have any mods installed?

Was RC2 your initial install?  Or did you install 2.1 prior to RC2?

When upgrading to the current github, did you run the upgrader, or just overwrite the files? 

[m4z]

I cannot replicate this - either under RC2 or the current github, in my WAMP or Linux environments. 

Could you copy the support info from under Admin | Main | Support & Credits?  That would provide the mysql & php versions. 

Yeah, later today. A mod uninstall just broke my playground install, will have to reinstall.

Do you have any mods installed?

None that should matter:

• GDPR Helper
• Curve2 Color Changer

Was RC2 your initial install?  Or did you install 2.1 prior to RC2?

Initial install.

When upgrading to the current github, did you run the upgrader, or just overwrite the files?

I dropped the database, then copied over the files from a current git checkout with the following script, then ran the installer. I hope this gives me a fresh install.

Code: [Select]

# cat /root/git/smf-alpha-deploy.bash
#!/bin/bash

set -e

GITCO="/root/git/SMF2.1"
TARGET="/home/alpha-smf/public_html"

# TODO only works once per day
mv ${TARGET}{,.$(date +%F)}
mkdir ${TARGET}
cp -r ${GITCO}/* ${TARGET}/

# some files aren't where they're supposed to be
rm -rf ${TARGET}/other
cp ${GITCO}/other/{install*,Settings.php,readme.html} ${TARGET}/

chown -R alpha-smf.www-data ${TARGET}/
chmod -R 775 ${TARGET}/


[Arantor]

May be relevant to note that this is Postgres (judging by comments in other threads) which means it might not work properly and probably has never been tested in PGSQL before now.

[m4z]

I cannot replicate this - either under RC2 or the current github, in my WAMP or Linux environments. 

Could you copy the support info from under Admin | Main | Support & Credits?  That would provide the mysql & php versions. 

Yeah, later today. A mod uninstall just broke my playground install, will have to reinstall.

Support Information:

Version Information:
Forum version: SMF 2.1 RC2
Current SMF version: SMF 2.1 RC2
GD version: 2.1.1-dev
PostgreSQL engine: PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL version: 9.4.22
PHP: 5.6.40-0+deb8u4
Server version: lighttpd

I haven't installed the mods again, the problem exists without them, too.

May be relevant to note that this is Postgres (judging by comments in other threads) which means it might not work properly and probably has never been tested in PGSQL before now.

Yeah I figured this would be visible in the support info (and I was in a hurry). I also can't judge if the DB type has any influence on Notification behavior. From your comment I assume it does?

[Arantor]

I’m just suggesting that it might be a PGSQL-specific bug because that stuff has never, ever been thoroughly tested on PGSQL.

I don’t think it misbehaves on MySQL but it’s been a long time since I checked.

[albertlast]

Can you please check the postgres log in you data directy of postgres?
Ther should be listen query from smf which created errors.

Based on the error message you mention,
the error don't sound like a postgres issue.

Please had in mind that gdpr helper is not working on postgres,
as fare i know.

[m4z]

Can you please check the postgres log in you data directy of postgres?
Ther should be listen query from smf which created errors.

Based on the error message you mention,
the error don't sound like a postgres issue.

This is all I have for the last install:

2019-09-08 19:37:50 UTC [14086-1] alpha-smf@alpha-smf ERROR:  relation "alphasmf_settings" does not exist at character 36
2019-09-08 19:37:50 UTC [14086-2] alpha-smf@alpha-smf STATEMENT:
                                SELECT variable, value
                                FROM alphasmf_settings
2019-09-08 19:37:50 UTC [14080-1] alpha-smf@alpha-smf ERROR:  relation "alphasmf_settings" does not exist at character 34
2019-09-08 19:37:50 UTC [14080-2] alpha-smf@alpha-smf STATEMENT:
                        SELECT variable, value
                        FROM alphasmf_settings

The error about char 36 is in the logs 14 times, the last one about char 34 only once. IIRC, I had errors like this on every install, right when the DB tables are created the first time. I always assumed this was some code testing for pre-existing tables.

Please had in mind that gdpr helper is not working on postgres,
as fare i know.

I have it working and been using it for a few months (I can install and use it without problems, just not uninstall it ). But as I stated above, the problem persists whether I install any mods or not.

[albertlast]

But the table alphasmf_settings exists now?

You gdpr fix looks very wrong,
the mod author or you should use the smf db_insert api like mention below.

[m4z]

But the table alphasmf_settings exists now?

alpha-smf=> select * from alphasmf_settings;
[...]
(212 rows)

I guess I'd have more than my 2 errors (mentioned in the first post) in the error log if that table was missing.

You gdpr fix looks very wrong,
the mod author or you should use the smf db_insert api like mention below.

I'm not surprised, I only have a very basic understanding of SMF and GDPRHelper code, and haven't had time to look into the db_* functions yet. I'll keep it in mind, but it's totally OT here.

[albertlast]

Tested with the nightly version of today,
with
pg 11
php 7.3

no error message appears by changing the notify type,
when clicken on the top right of a thread and choose one mode.

[m4z]

Thanks for testing, I'll see how the nightly behaves on my server (sometime later this week).

[m4z]

I'm having the same problem with the nightly from an hour ago.

Any way to make the logs more verbose?