I may have a handle on the "duplicate posts" problem...possible bug?

[Dragon]

I started getting the "duplicate posts" (see this thread) problem myself today, and it seems not to be directly related to the MySQL configuration as was previously thought (I was seeing a lot of aborted clients, which eva2000 helped me with), but with a possible bug in the includes/functions_search.php routine.

I can repeat the problem at will when posting a new thread. The following error shows up in /var/log/messages:

Dec 19 03:27:39 homerecording httpd: PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 129 bytes) in /var/www/bbs/includes/functions_search.php on line 220

And the weird thing is, there is no real "search" going on per se; line 220 seems to be parsing the post into "good words" and "bad words".

I'm going to increase the memory allocation immediately, of course, but I hope someone can take a look at this code because this shouldn't be happening...thanks in advance.

[Dragon]

Bump.

Please?

[Steve Machol]

Not sure I understand. Have you installed any hacks or modified and vB files?

[Dragon]

The only thing I've modified was changing the post check timeout to 30 seconds from 300 in an attempt to solve the problem.

[Steve Machol]

Well all I can suggest is that if you think you've found a bug, then you should post in the Bug Tracker. However if this is a specific situation with your MySQL configuration then the Server Configuration forum would be the correct place to post.

[etom]

We have exactly (!) the same "duplicate thread" problems as mentioned before after a dedicated server upgrade.
We also have such error_log entries:
"Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 0 bytes)".

This bug seems very special and is not always reproducable.
We are running a big board (>75000 members, 1500000 posts, avg. 1000 users online).
We are using exactly the same mysql-configuration as before.

Now we'll try to set the memory_limit to 128M. Hope that works.
But what is consuming that much memory ?

[redbox]

We are also having this problem. I am not able to view my error_log so I can't verify if we have the memory error. I was able to view our messages log and we did not have the function_search.php error that Dragon had.

However, our problems are this:

Sometimes the person gets the generic "cannot find server" error. Sometimes they get the duplicate thread error - even though it is not a duplicate and they have not pressed submit twice. This has also happened to me.


This only happens when creating a new thread - we have not had anyone say it has happened during a reply (though one person had this occur when sending a new PM)

Sometimes when this happens, the thread will post, but if you go to the forum home page, it does not show up as the latest post. You have to go into that forum and verify the thread is there.

Things we have done to try to resolve this:
Reverted templates
Reloaded all files
Repair/Optimize database

This has been happening since May or June. We have gone through several upgrades of 3.03 to 3.06 but none solved the problem.

Another problem we have is the occasional new thread that doesn't fully post. A title is created, but the field that should hold the post is empty. When this happens, we get a mysql error email that details the problem, and we've not been able to resolve it. I posted for help in this thread but the problem persists. I only mention it in this post because the problem started happening at the same time, so it may or may not be related.

We use PHP 4.33 MySql 4.0.22, Dual Xeon, 3 GB Ram, hosted with Servermatrix

[etom]

A Solution.

With a memory_limit of 128M we got less but still some
"Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted"-errors.

Now using a memory_limit of 256M any problems are gone.
(256M is the same limit like the one of our old server now, that's why we never ran into these problems before).

Imho this is a workaround, but not a solution

Tom

[Freddie Bingham]

Do you have the Similar Thread search enabled? What happens if you enable it and reduce your memory to what it was before?

[redbox]

I can't comment for Tom, of course, but would like to say that we enabled similar threads about a month ago, yet this problem has been ongoing for several months. Our memory limit is currently only 8mb and we are getting ready to increase it, with fingers crossed. Is there an issue with increasing it to such a high limit?

[etom]

Do you have the Similar Thread search enabled? What happens if you enable it and reduce your memory to what it was before?

The Similar Thread option is enabled.

[redbox]

We increased our memory limit to 256mb 5 days ago and things looked good, but we are getting the same duplicate thread error again now.

Is there anything specific you can recommend I look for that might help pin this down? I'm clueless.

[Zachery]

Disable Similiar threads.

[Mansour]

I also have this problem, but when I disable Similiar threads, its disappear.

[redbox]

Our problem started last summer, and we didn't enable similar threads until this winter. However, I went ahead and disabled it to see what would happen. I just received word that the errors are still happening anyway. They seem to have slowed down since upping the max memory limit to 256mb. But, the problem still exists