Pruning 9000+ Members - Invalid Action Specified

Collapse
X
 
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
  • Snotek
    Member
    • Apr 2004
    • 86

    [Forum] Pruning 9000+ Members - Invalid Action Specified

    While trying to prune some 9500 members I get the error "Invalid Action Specified" and cannot continue. I did some searching and have found threads on this site back to 2007 or so identifying the same issue which is still apparently unresolved. The "best answers" I could find are a) your server cannot handle it and b) do smaller batches.

    Neither of these answers are acceptable for mass prune jobs such as these, and besides would require a lot of admin time to manually select bulk users like that - especially when there is a built-in system for doing just this type of activity.

    I am currently running vB 4.2.0PL3 on a dedicated server that I assure you has enough horsepower to easily accomplish this task.

    While a customized SQL query could also do the job directly from the database I'm unsure as to the greater ramifications of this action, if any, and is also not an acceptable answer.

    Can someone from vBulletin please take a look at this issue?
  • Lynne
    Former vBulletin Support
    • Oct 2004
    • 26255

    #2
    Just do a Prune, and set the Has not Logged on for xx days to different numbers to get a smaller batch to delete.

    Please don't PM or VM me for support - I only help out in the threads.
    vBulletin Manual & vBulletin 4.0 Code Documentation (API)
    Want help modifying your vbulletin forum? Head on over to vbulletin.org
    If I post CSS and you don't know where it goes, throw it into the additional.css template.

    W3Schools <- awesome site for html/css help

    Comment

    • Snotek
      Member
      • Apr 2004
      • 86

      #3
      There is no way to do this. The pruning mechanism is not set up to apply a date range. So I can only search for "Registered Users who have not logged in for 180 days." This query still gives me 9300+ users.

      Comment

      • Lynne
        Former vBulletin Support
        • Oct 2004
        • 26255

        #4
        Then try 400 days, or 500 days. You should be able to find some number to enter that will make the group smaller.

        Please don't PM or VM me for support - I only help out in the threads.
        vBulletin Manual & vBulletin 4.0 Code Documentation (API)
        Want help modifying your vbulletin forum? Head on over to vbulletin.org
        If I post CSS and you don't know where it goes, throw it into the additional.css template.

        W3Schools <- awesome site for html/css help

        Comment

        • NorCal
          New Member
          • Nov 2008
          • 20
          • 3.7.x

          #5
          same problem changing date does not solve it

          also 4.2pl3
          I did an Impex import which set about 10,000 users to the same date: 1970. Even if I set the date to thousands of days, it is still going to return the same number.

          Originally posted by Lynne
          Then try 400 days, or 500 days. You should be able to find some number to enter that will make the group smaller.

          Comment

          • Ion Saliu
            Senior Member
            • Sep 2010
            • 172
            • 4.2.X

            #6
            I did have a similar problem:

            vBulletin 4.1.12PL1; before upgrading, I decided to bulk-remove a bunch of suckers from the members of my forums. I tried this AdminCP, Users, Prune / Move Users. I applied one criterion and the system returned some 1200 users. I made sure all were selected in the checkboxes. I checked Delete, then I pressed Go. The mouse


            In my experience, I wasn’t able to delete 1000 or more users in a batch. Now, my forum is not that old (since September 2010). I started pruning when the number of “members” reached 13,000. I realized that 90% of them were spammers.

            There is a failed business on the Internet to create user profiles in many, many forums. The scammers “think” that the search engines would improve a website’s ranking because there are lots of backlinks pointing to the website. NOT! Au contraire, Google started to severely punish the websites who resort to such SEO tactics!

            I’m pretty sure now that 75% to 90% of all users, in any forum in the world, are spammers created mainly by spambots.

            So, I resolved my problem by setting the days without a login to 1000. If your forum is very old, figure out its age in days. Set days without a login to the age of your forum. Hopefully, you’ll get a number of total users under 1000. If not, try first one group at a time. Start with users awaiting email verification; then banned users

            It is very easy for me now, as I keep total members under 1000. I just did a pruning operation before posting this reply.

            It could be that 1000 users to prune is the maximum limit of a pruning batch.

            Best of luck!

            Ion Saliu
            Board Maintenance: Users Pruned for Inactivity

            Comment

            • MikeF
              Senior Member
              • Jan 2006
              • 172

              #7
              Invalid Action is a message relayed by vBulletin code and not any PHP or MySQL setting that I am aware of. Most of this thread is incorrect information, as other threads on the subject. "You should fix your server configuration and php.ini" but no indication as to where. Guess what: set MySQL timeout to unlimited, memory to 24GB, and all PHP and socket timeouts to 9999999 and the message still appears. It is a limit of vBulletin and should be addressed as such.

              Comment

              • snakes1100
                Senior Member
                • Aug 2001
                • 1249

                #8
                Originally posted by MikeF
                Invalid Action is a message relayed by vBulletin code and not any PHP or MySQL setting that I am aware of. Most of this thread is incorrect information, as other threads on the subject. "You should fix your server configuration and php.ini" but no indication as to where. Guess what: set MySQL timeout to unlimited, memory to 24GB, and all PHP and socket timeouts to 9999999 and the message still appears. It is a limit of vBulletin and should be addressed as such.
                You are incorrect, this is a simple fix & has been posted correctly numerous times, its not a memory issue, nor is it related to mysql settings, they can be a factor if your trying to prune say 50,000 at a time though.

                This issue is also related to suhosin if its installed.

                This issue is related to input variables & their lengths, which is php.

                Vbulletin, should correct the error msg.
                Last edited by snakes1100; Mon 22 Jul '13, 9:33pm.
                Gentoo Geek

                Comment

                • MikeF
                  Senior Member
                  • Jan 2006
                  • 172

                  #9
                  Originally posted by snakes1100

                  You are incorrect, this is a simple fix & has been posted correctly numerous times, its not a memory issue, nor is it related to mysql settings, they can be a factor if your trying to prune say 50,000 at a time though.

                  This issue is also related to suhosin if its installed.

                  This issue is related to input variables & their lengths, which is php.

                  Vbulletin, should correct the error msg.
                  I am using a server without Suhosin installed at all and its still dropping the error with a phrase in AdminCP from user.php:

                  Code:
                                         define('CP_REDIRECT', "user.php?do=pruneusers" .
                                                  "&usergroupid=" . $vbulletin->GPC['usergroupid'] .
                                                  "&daysprune=" . $vbulletin->GPC['daysprune'] .
                                                  "&minposts=" . $vbulletin->GPC['minposts'] .
                                                  "&joindate=" . $vbulletin->GPC['joindate'] .
                                                  "&order=" . $vbulletin->GPC['order']
                                          );
                  
                                          print_stop_message('invalid_action_specified');
                  and

                  Code:
                  // ############################# do prune users #########################
                  if ($_REQUEST['do'] == 'dodeleteusers')
                  The error is dropped in the code itself with the stop_message. Why its still doing it I don't know. Its not like 20,000 its almost like its hard wired. Here is what I think: having deleted almost 15,000 users, almost manually, earlier last night, some had been listed as banned but were listed in the primary usergroup COPPA Users Awaiting Moderation when viewing their profile data. When checking this usergroup field and even trying to move these users into a usergroup with a SQL query I ended up seeing 0 results for anyone being listed in this usergroup,anyone being in a null primary usergroup, etc. While I have not had the patience to fully examine the problem because this is a live production site, I routinely found user data listed in the prune user function of users without a usergroup listed under their username. (You are about to execute pruneusers and see the enormous list upon you - let me clarify some have no usergroup listed under the username itself very rarely).

                  In some way or another there was some kind of corruption with these fields, perhaps between versions. Also, are you saying something in the table should be a long INT when its not or what exactly? I would think that lends itself to a database problem and not mutually exclusive to PHP. However if you know if the "simple fix has been posted correctly numerous times" what is it exactly?

                  Comment

                  • snakes1100
                    Senior Member
                    • Aug 2001
                    • 1249

                    #10
                    Adjust your input variables via php.ini
                    Gentoo Geek

                    Comment

                    • Zachery
                      Former vBulletin Support
                      • Jul 2002
                      • 59097

                      #11
                      As far as I know, if you're getting the invalid action specified, some of the required data was not passed along. This is normally an issue with the server truncating the post request, or not getting all of it.

                      Comment

                      Related Topics

                      Collapse

                      Working...