Search has stopped working - aaarrggghhh!!

[Craig A]

Any ideas on why the search feature has suddenly stopped working on my site ? See for yourself - http://www.ten-tenths.com/forum/

I am getting a 'document contains no data' error on all searches including 'view other posts by this user' and 'view posts since your last visit'

They /did/ work...

HELP!

[Martin]

first, did you do anything in the CP before this started?

[Craig A]

I can safely say that, after many hourse fecking around in there yesterday, I was relaxing at work whilst the problem surfaced... :p

[JimF]

This happened to me; I had changed the $BBURL to /index.php, and the search called $BBURL?$SearchURL, so it became /index.php/search.php. I didn't notice this until a while after I changed it...

[Craig A]

Nope - not that :(

[werehere]

Well I assume that it has to do with the URL. It ends up being:

http://ten-tenths.accelerator.org/forum/search.php?q

But started out being:

http://www.ten-tenths.com/forum/search.php


See the difference? Do you think that this is the problem?

[Craig A]

urrrghh! Looks like Network Solutions FINALLY updated their database and realised we're on a new server! woohoo!

Anyway, no, I don't think that's the problem because the same happens when I run from the 'accelerated' site. The problem with the the database rather than the script as if you try to search for 'a' or 'b' it returns an error telling you to enter a search word, whilst a search for a word (which obviously queries the search index) brings the 'no data' error :(

I tried rebuilding the search index, but there's no difference.. :(

[werehere]

I personally am stumped with your search problem, so I guess it is time to point John over to this one;)

[Edited by werehere on 06-06-2000 at 11:25 PM]

[Craig A]

Thanks anyway. Looking forward to John's speedy arrival... :)

[John]

Hmmm. Has that started recently, or did something happen when switching servers (if you have switched servers)?

Also, what versions of PHP/MySQL are you running. If it is PHP4, not the final release, get your host to upgrade ASAP. There have been problems with the beta releases of PHP4.

John

[Craig A]

No, the problem just appeared on it's own - it /was/ working fine... and I have only had this script running on our new server - the old one didn't have PHP to play with :(

I'm now 100% on the versions of MySQL and PHP, but we were running PHP 3 (unless Chris has upgraded it - which might explain the sudden occurence of the problem) I'll check with him though...

[Craig A]

From the horses mouth...



>Can you let me know what versions of PHP and MySQL we're
>running as a problem has developed with the new forum
>and the developer is asking...

The version of MySQL is 3.22.22
The version of PHP is 3

Regards,
Chris Yates - Internet Systems Development / Consultant

[Craig A]

Any thoughts on this one guys ? The natives are getting restless... ;)

[John]

You're up early Craig :) 6:50AM

Hmmm. This is a tricky one. Firstly, I would check out your search related templates that they have not become corrupted. You can check them in the members area.

Also, check that you have all the latest versions of all the files. Download the 1.1.2 ZIP from the members area and upload the scripts.

As a last thought for now, do you have telnet access to the server? You may want to logon and see if any of the vBulletin tables have become corrupted in some way. You can do this using the isamchk tool:

/usr/local/mysql/bin/isamchk -r /usr/local/mysql/data/forum/template

You may need to change some of the paths to MySQL and the data. Also repeat the above with thread instead of template.

What version of PHP3 is it? Did the problems start when you uploaded a new version of the files? Also, if you have access to your webserver's error log, because this may contain some useful info.

Let me know if any of those help.

John

[Craig A]

John,
I'm gonna upload the very latest version of 1.1.2 later this evening, so i'll see if that cures it. If not, i'll amend the search templates to the original default ones and see if that helps.

If not, i'm stuck as i've not got a clue what the rest of your message was about... :) I know I don't have access to Telnet into the server sadly (but the admin is a good lad and i'll get him to do it for me... :p)
]
I'll let you know if we have any joy.

[Craig A]

No luck John :(

I've updated the software and added the original templates for the search results wotsits. Same problem - script shows an error if you enter no search terms, or if no matches are found. If results /are/ found, the browser shows a 'document contains no data' error.

I will have to have my server guy look at your other suggestions, but there's nothing else you can think of ?

[John]

Which version of PHP3 did you say you are using?

[Chris the server man]

PHP is version 3.0.16

The "isamchk" script returned:

[root@ns1] </usr/home/root> isamchk -r /var/db/mysql/tentenths_forum/template
- recovering ISAM table '/var/db/mysql/tentenths_forum/template.ISM'
Data records: 163
- Fixing index 1



[Edited by Chris the server man on 06-08-2000 at 07:46 PM]

[John]

Thanks Chris. Craig, can you let me know if that has helped at all?

Thanks,
John

[Chris the server man]

Oh hell. Something's wrong with the site..

The template table has completely vanished! Argh!

Is there anything I can do to get it back?

[Chris the server man]

Awww, hell. That was a close one..

Forced mysql to do a refresh, and everything's back where it should be now..

Throught i'd lost it all for a minute :(

Can't tell whether it's fixed yet.. Have to wait for Craig to come back..



[Edited by Chris the server man on 06-08-2000 at 08:27 PM]

[John]

Yes - I noticed that just as you were fixing it I think. don't scare us like that again. :)

Could you do a similar thing for the thread table too. Unfortunately, it does not work after what you did with the template table. Also, could you provide me with some information about the server please? Is this a shared server? Is PHP compiled as a module, if so is it a special version for the server?

Thanks,
John

[bira]

This thread scares the living **** out of me :)

Can someone, on this occasion, teach me how I back up the data in MySQL and how I restore that data from backup incase the absolute worst happens?

Thanks :)

[Mike Sullivan]

Well, you can download and setup phpMyAdmin. From there you can dump the data and table setup (schema). Watch out, it'll probably take awhile :D

/me hides in corner fearing the worst.

[werehere]

bira,

Take Ed's advice and install phpMyAdmin because it will save your forum if anything happens. I back up mine daily, and it is easy. You can also restore it easily by importing the .sql file back into MySQL.

I have explained step by step how to do this in another thread, and John has explaied another way for Virtual users in the same thread I believe:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=879

[Craig A]

Bloody hell Chris - calm down tiger! This actually reminds me, i've got to speak with you about backups... :)

Sadly it doesn't help anyway :(

[Chris the server man]

Originally posted by Craig Antill
Bloody hell Chris - calm down tiger! This actually reminds me, i've got to speak with you about backups... :)


Working on it :)

Sorry about the outburst.. Reckon I didn't have enough sleep.. Anyway - I've just run the isamchk on the thread table, and the results are not particularly promising I'm afraid :(

PHP stuff: PHP3.0.16 was installed as a compiled-in module (mod_php3) with Apache. Apache version is 1.3.12. The server is shared with other users, but not too many. It's currently a PIII-450 with 30Gb of disk, and 512Mb of memory.

Do you think upgrading to PHP4 will help at all?

[Chris the server man]

One other thing. I've just found a PHP "ini" file in one of the server directories.
In it are a few directives that may be useful to change, but I'm not sure.. They are :

max_execution_time = 30 ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds
memory_limit = 8388608 ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (8MB)

I was just wondering if increasing these values might help at all?

Also I have enabled a log file to see if I can get any more info on why the scripts are bombing out. More news as it comes in..

[Chris the server man]

Sorry about all the postings.

I've just enabled outputting warning messages to the browser window, and the scripts are generating a whole bunch of these..

Could someone have another look at the search script, and see if the warning messages are normal or something to worry about?

http://www.ten-tenths.com/forum/search.php

[Craig A]

Chris, believe it or not i've just had a phone call at work from someone who browses our board to inform me of these problems (god knows how they got my number!) Anyway, i've just taken a look, and this problem seems to afflict /all/ pages :( This seems to be a pretty major problem, so I would appreciare if anyone could shed any light on the problem for us, so we can get back up and running asap...

[Chris the server man]

Hmm. It wasn't doing that before. Okay, I've disabled printing the errors to the browser.. I'll now post a selection of the error messages here:

HP 3 Warning: Uninitialized variable or array index or property (FORUMINFO) in /usr/
www/ten-tenths/forum/class.FastTemplate.php3 on line 300
PHP 3 Warning: Uninitialized variable or array index or property (FORUMINFO) in class
.FastTemplate.php3 on line 300
PHP 3 Warning: Uninitialized variable or array index or property (nocache) in global.
php on line 21
PHP 3 Warning: Using uninitialized variable $query_id in admin/db_mysql.php on line 9
9
PHP 3 Warning: Uninitialized variable or array index or property () in admin/db_mysql
.php on line 99
PHP 3 Warning: Uninitialized variable or array index or property (optionstemp) in adm
in/db_mysql.php on line 89
PHP 3 Warning: Uninitialized variable or array index or property (optionstemp) in adm
in/db_mysql.php on line 90
PHP 3 Warning: 'template' is not a valid constant - assumed to be "template" in globa
l.php on line 52
PHP 3 Warning: Using uninitialized variable $query_id in admin/db_mysql.php on line 9
9
PHP 3 Warning: Uninitialized variable or array index or property () in admin/db_mysql
.php on line 99
PHP 3 Warning: Uninitialized variable or array index or property (userinfo) in admin/
db_mysql.php on line 89
PHP 3 Warning: Uninitialized variable or array index or property (userinfo) in admin/
db_mysql.php on line 90
PHP 3 Warning: 'password' is not a valid constant - assumed to be "password" in globa
l.php on line 643
PHP 3 Warning: 'password' is not a valid constant - assumed to be "password" in globa
l.php on line 643
PHP 3 Warning: 'password' is not a valid constant - assumed to be "password" in globa
l.php on line 643
PHP 3 Warning: 'daysprune' is not a valid constant - assumed to be "daysprune" in glo
bal.php on line 645
PHP 3 Warning: 'usergroupid' is not a valid constant - assumed to be "usergroupid" in
global.php on line 648
PHP 3 Warning: 'timezoneoffset' is not a valid constant - assumed to be "timezoneoffs
et" in global.php on line 649
PHP 3 Warning: 'lastactivity' is not a valid constant - assumed to be "lastactivity"
in global.php on line 650
PHP 3 Warning: 'lastactivity' is not a valid constant - assumed to be "lastactivity"
in global.php on line 652

[Craig A]

Blimey, that is a 'selection'! There were reams of those the minute ago... :( Should I close the forum until this is resolved, or is it safe to carry on with it open ? (the errors must be there for a reason, right ? :))

[Chris the server man]

Well, these are supposed to be 'only warnings' and most of them shouldn't affect the running of the system apparently.

I was thinking they were related to the search page, but it seems they appear from just about any script.. Wierd.

The rest of the site still works though, it's just the search that doesn't..

[wandrer]

Could you show us a phpinfo() for that server ? That might help.

[Chris the server man]

How do I do phpinfo?

[Craig A]

http://ten-tenths.accelerator.org/forum/phpinfo.php

[wandrer]

Error_Reporting is currently set to 15. Normally it should be set to 7. By using 15, you are including non-error style warnings in the output. Changing it to 7 should stop those non-error style warnings.


=====

Table 3-1. Error Reporting Levels

bit value enabled reporting
1 normal errors
2 normal warnings
4 parser errors
8 non-critical style-related warnings

The default value for this directive is 7 (normal errors, normal warnings and parser errors are shown).

=====

Edit: From http://usa.php.net/manual/html/configuration.html


[Edited by wandrer on 06-09-2000 at 01:39 PM]

[Chris the server man]

I know. I set the error level to 15 to see if there were any warnings about things that may stop the search from functioning..

[Craig A]

So, the original query still stands, what has broken the search ? John, PLEASE do you have ANY other ideas ? If not, what do we do next ?

[wandrer]

When you run the search.php file from telnet with variables for an actual search like:

query=test
forumchoice=-1
booleanand=yes
searchin=all
searchdate=-1
searchuser=
exactname=yes
action=dosearch
getdaily=
&pagenum=

What does it give you ?

[Chris the server man]

How would you run the script from a shell?

[wandrer]

The easiest way I did it was to compile PHP4 as standalone. That way you actually have a PHP executable. Then, you just run PHP search.cgi <plus variables>

[Craig A]

Right John, please get your arse into gear and help with this one - the problem has now spread to the whole forum and we cannot view ANY page now - the forum is down.

WHAT IS GOING ON ? This is NOT GOOD :(

[Chris the server man]

Craig, it's okay to give me a ring...

As for the forum, it looks okay to me, is it still down from your side?

[WebStyles]

It's not down for me either... :)

Hey, hey... Guess what I found out! Your search isn't all the way broken. If you search one forum for a keyword that doesn't bring up any matches, you get the page... Click for example (http://www.ten-tenths.com/forum/search.php?query=blah&forumchoice=6&booleanand=yes&searchin=all&searchdate=-1&searchuser=&exactname=yes&action=dosearch&getdaily=&pagenum=).

Maybe that will give a hint to what's causing the problem?

[Chris the server man]

Kind of implies that the 'search successful' page has a problem somewhere...

[WebStyles]

That's what I was thinking, Mr. Server Man... :)

[WebStyles]

Wandrer... I tested it with quite a few of the forums, it seems to not cause a problem, only when no results are found.

[John]

Chris: have you had a chance to look at Apache's error log. If not, could you do so, and post any relavent errors that appear.

John

[Chris the server man]

Nothing actually appears in the server error log when this error occurs. I've also got a php log going (mostly warnings) and nothing is appearing in there either. The server basically is returning no data from the query at all. It's as though the script is totally bombing out.

[John]

Craig, the best this for me would be to log onto the server and have a look at the search script. Could you email me your details please, if that is ok with you.

Thanks,

John

[Chris the server man]

Just got this in the common error log for the server (hadn't previously looked there) :

[Sat Jun 10 00:20:31 2000] [notice] child pid 79971 exit signal Floating point exception (8)
[Sat Jun 10 00:20:31 2000] [notice] child pid 79938 exit signal Floating point exception (8)

[Craig A]

Sorry about that folks - got pissed off with it, so gave up and went to bed! I am glad to say that the problem has resolved itself now, but the search is still buggered.


Originally posted by Chris the server man
Kind of implies that the 'search successful' page has a problem somewhere...

That's the conclusion that we came to earlier, but when I updated the software and reverted to the standard templates for all the search related bits, we still had the same result :(

John, i'll do that... Cheers! (another case of beer on the way if we fix it ? :))

[John]

Craig,

I'll try and get onto your server ASAP.

Chris:

Was there anything else around those lines?

John

[Chris the server man]

No - those were about the only log messages that actually appeared..

[Parker Clack]

I am having similar problems with the search engine on my site. Whatever I try to search for returns the following.

>>>
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.

---------------------------------

Please try the following:

Click the Refresh button, or try again later.

If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.

To check your connection settings, click the Tools menu, and then click Internet Options. On the Connections tab, click Settings. The settings should match those provided by your local area network (LAN) administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).
If your Network Administrator has enabled it, Microsoft Windows can examine your network and automatically discover network connection settings.
If you would like Windows to try and discover them,
click Detect Network Settings
Some sites require 128-bit connection security. Click the Help menu and then click About Internet Explorer to determine what strength security you have installed.
If you are trying to reach a secure site, make sure your Security settings can support it. Click the Tools menu, and then click Internet Options. On the Advanced tab, scroll to the Security section and check settings for SSL 2.0, SSL 3.0, TLS 1.0, PCT 1.0.
Click the Back button to try another link.



Cannot find server or DNS Error
Internet Explorer

>>>

This just started when I installed version 1.1.2 and I am running it with PHP 3.0.16 and Apache 1.3.11.

I tried uploading the newest version in the members area
over the old files and got all kinds of errors.


Parker

[Craig A]

What did you find, John ?

[Craig A]

HELLO ? John, it's been best part of a week since this feature broke and i'm growing tired of fielding email asking why it's not working :( PLEASE can you get something done to fix it ?

[John]

See this thread:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=1070

Craig: apologies for the delay. I have changed the scripts as neccessary on your server.

John

[Craig A]

Thanks John - I feel like a complete man again... ;)