Some post not visible in SMF2.019 but can see all in tapatalk

Started by ltwrightknives, January 11, 2022, 01:39:15 PM

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ltwrightknives

I recently manually migrated from a old hosting plan to a new hosting plan with the same company and got the forum moved but I can not access some posts from the forum.  They come up as a blank entry but i can see all of the information when I look at the same topic on tapatalk.  Any thoughts on what I am missing?

Shambles

Any entries in your forum's error log immediately following an attempt to view one of the 'blank' posts?

ltwrightknives

Quote from: Shambles on January 11, 2022, 01:51:34 PMAny entries in your forum's error log immediately following an attempt to view one of the 'blank' posts?

No,  The error log is not reporting anything.

shawnb61

My first guess is the charset/collation was changed in error upon forum move....
Address the process rather than the outcome.  Then, the outcome becomes more likely.   - Fripp

ltwrightknives

Quote from: shawnb61 on January 11, 2022, 02:34:43 PMMy first guess is the charset/collation was changed in error upon forum move....

How can I check that?

shawnb61

If your host moved the forum for you, then it may be best to have them to confirm charset & collation were not altered inadvertently during the move.  Make them confirm it.  If they changed it, they need to fix it.

On your side, you can check by looking at the tables & columns and a couple of the settings:
1) If viewing the list of tables in phpmyadmin (or similar) - what is the collation of all your tables?  Are they all the same?
2) In your Settings.php file, what is the value for $db_character_set?
3) In your smf_settings table, what is the value for global_character_set?

In a forum that was properly converted to utf8:
1) all tables will have a collation of utf8_general_ci
2) $db_character_set = 'utf8'
3) global_character_set = 'UTF-8'

If you forum was NOT converted to utf8, the 3 conditions above would NOT be true.  That's not a bad thing, it just means that you were not converted.

We just need to be consistently utf8 or consistently not utf8.  Halfway there causes issues.
Address the process rather than the outcome.  Then, the outcome becomes more likely.   - Fripp

ltwrightknives

Everything is as you have written.  I also ran the utf utility inside SMF and am still having the same issue.

Illori


ltwrightknives

Quote from: Illori on January 12, 2022, 08:27:36 AMDoes that topic/post have an attachment anywhere in it?

Some do and some do not.  It is about half of the web version.  I also discovered that if I make a new post on a missing thread it then shows up on the web version.

shawnb61

Address the process rather than the outcome.  Then, the outcome becomes more likely.   - Fripp

ltwrightknives

Quote from: shawnb61 on January 12, 2022, 10:33:11 AMNext I would try running 'Find and Fix any Errors'

When i run the the 'find and fix', i got this list of errors. 

The following errors are fouling up your forum:
Topic #2 has the last message ID 9733, which is incorrect.
Topic #3 has the last message ID 6372, which is incorrect.
Topic #4 has the last message ID 129109, which is incorrect.
Topic #7 has the last message ID 1827, which is incorrect.
Topic #8 has the last message ID 306388, which is incorrect.
Topic #3967 has the last message ID 82469, which is incorrect.
Topic #3971 has the last message ID 82328, which is incorrect.
Topic #3978 has the last message ID 82537, which is incorrect.
Topic #11160 has the last message ID 82846, which is incorrect.

I select that I would like to fix them and it indicates that it was successful.  However when I run 'find and fix' I still get the same list of errors.


shawnb61

Interesting...  Are those the problem topics?  Or is the list of topics completely unrelated to the blank page issue?
Address the process rather than the outcome.  Then, the outcome becomes more likely.   - Fripp

ltwrightknives

Quote from: shawnb61 on January 12, 2022, 11:31:13 AMInteresting...  Are those the problem topics?  Or is the list of topics completely unrelated to the blank page issue?

I was able to do the workaround I mentioned earlier and no longer have blank topics in the web version. but the list of blank topics was much larger than the list of reported errors

shawnb61

This behavior overall is very unusual - it feels like the topics & messages tables were out of sync upon restore.  Or one of the tables is/was damaged.

Does your trick work on the list above?  Do they fall from the list?

Any errors in the SMF error log?  The apache error log?

Are your sessions db-based or file-based?

Have you tried repairing the tables?

I've seen 'find and repair' issues get stuck like that before (rarely), and it has been due to session issues.  F&R saves work-to-do in the session.  Usually pretty clear in the error logs, though.  And only for an unusually large fix.

Then again, maybe you are only seeing part of a large fix...

When F&R gets stuck like this, what I find works is to temporarily change sessions to file-based - NOT db-based.  You need to log off & then log back in.  And then do the F&R - multiple times until it comes clean.  (That way you bypass the size limitation on the data field in the sessions table...)  Set them back to db-based sessions when done.
Address the process rather than the outcome.  Then, the outcome becomes more likely.   - Fripp

ltwrightknives

The trick does not affect the list of errors.

There are no obvious errors in the SMF error log, just failed guest logins. Nothing in apache error log.  I have tried running the repair function in SMF.


shawnb61

Hmmm...  if I were in your shoes next thing id try is repairing the tables directly in a tool like phpmyadmin.

Something was messed up in that move.
Address the process rather than the outcome.  Then, the outcome becomes more likely.   - Fripp

ltwrightknives

Quote from: shawnb61 on January 12, 2022, 04:11:43 PMHmmm...  if I were in your shoes next thing id try is repairing the tables directly in a tool like phpmyadmin.

Something was messed up in that move.

So i ran the repair database thru phpmyadmin and tried to fix and repair in SMF.  I go the same list of errors and when i said yes to fix and ran it again they were still there.

Shambles

SUGGESTION:

If it were my forum I would temporarily uninstall the Tapatalk code (mod) and see if you still get the symptoms.

You can always reinstall the mod later.

The reason I suggest this, is that Tapatalk 'superimposes' its own copies of certain scripts. The version you should be using is 4.5.8 (link) and that has its own versions of Display.php, Load.php, Post.php, Subs.php amongst many others. I'm not saying these are being loaded in preference to the SMF versions but we've had reports of interference in the past with their code.


ETA: this exercise would simply remove an unknown from the equation; I'm not saying it will fix the issue at hand.

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