Error on PCF

SLIP · Post by **SLIP** » 18 Oct 2006, 08:39

Sometimes when I click on the Topic Reply Notification link...

I get this error.....

"No posts exist for this topic"

Then I have to go to the Forum index, and then go to the page before the last one to access the tread, and if you click on the last page of the thread you get the same message.

I think this need to be fixed..?????

Here is a screen shot...

Ark · Post by **Ark** » 18 Oct 2006, 08:40

Havent you heard Rustypup speak of the "no post deamon"?

SLIP · Post by **SLIP** » 18 Oct 2006, 08:42

Nope.....

I34z1k · Post by **I34z1k** » 18 Oct 2006, 08:49

Its when a thread gets deleted.

lancelot · Post by **lancelot** » 18 Oct 2006, 08:50

I am afraid it is a throw back from the "Betty *****" days when the porn was posted, some of the quick deletions caused a problem. It is as you say Slip, but if you post in that thread it will suddenly display the next page for you. Cameron will look into it when he gets some time, probably around 2008.

SLIP · Post by **SLIP** » 18 Oct 2006, 09:11

lancelot wrote:I am afraid it is a throw back from the "Betty *****" days when the porn was posted, some of the quick deletions caused a problem. It is as you say Slip, but if you post in that thread it will suddenly display the next page for you. Cameron will look into it when he gets some time, probably around 2008.

Thanks Lance...

It's just a real pain...

rustypup · Post by **rustypup** » 18 Oct 2006, 09:59

ha... betty left an indelible mark... almost a case of evil pixie infection..

the problem is probably not with the posts being deleted, but the user... i suspect that the deletion of a post/poster breaks the php relational rules, therefore robbing the necessary queries of required indices..... very much like a black hole where none is expected... solution would probably be to reinstate a dummy user at the missing index, resolving the out-of-sync issue in the affected topics... i could be talking bat-dos, but i suspect this is the case.....

regardless, as lancelot said, posting a "no posts exist" correctional post is now understood by all to be the quickest work-around....
<edit>
could also be because a thread's post-count is being tallied in another table, which is not being adjusted down when a post is deleted....?
</edit>

SoulBlade · Post by **SoulBlade** » 18 Oct 2006, 10:28

rustypup wrote: the problem is probably not with the posts being deleted, but the user... i suspect that the deletion of a post/poster breaks the php relational rules, therefore robbing the necessary queries of required indices..... very much like a black hole where none is expected... solution would probably be to reinstate a dummy user at the missing index, resolving the out-of-sync issue in the affected topics... i could be talking bat-dos, but i suspect this is the case.....

OMG! This just made perfect sense to me! Guess thats coz I forgot to get a cup of coffee...

Jip, as Rusty said, just some pixie's doing some funky queries...

EDIT: How bout we lock this one and redirect to Rusty's explanation?

Post by **Ron2K** » 18 Oct 2006, 10:35

I'm sure that there's a phpBB mod that will do all the resynching. Just can't be bothered to look right now.

rustypup · Post by **rustypup** » 18 Oct 2006, 10:44

Ron2K wrote:I'm sure that there's a phpBB mod that will do all the resynching.

almost a certainty.. the more i think on it the less convinced i am that this has anything to do with user/post deletion... any DBMS which allowed the user to break transactional integrity to that degree would be very suspect... anyone here have any phpBB experience with this?....

i'm convinced this is something simple like a post-count tally not being updated.... not that this helps any...

... <resolves to quit pondering publicly....>

lancelot · Post by **lancelot** » 18 Oct 2006, 11:00

@ Rusty, it was a user deletion I am afraid, I will not tell you who deleted the user, but there was a bit of panic at the time. Synkro warned us not to do user deletions but in the heat of the moment................

Post by **Ron2K** » 18 Oct 2006, 11:04

I've had limited experience with this. I was the main administrator of a large phpBB forum a while ago (my UCT residence website forum) and I found that when the moderators deleted posts/topics, the user post counts wouldn't be updated (they're stored as an integral value in the phpbb_users table). I found a mod that would go and fix that. But that was for post counts; I have no experience of resynching topics (I've never seen those go out of sync before), although it's almost certainly possible.

(Side note: I still admin a phpBB forum, but it's not the same one that I mentioned in the paragraph above. This one is extremely quiet.)

EDIT: Found this:
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=358017
Appears to have some issues, but it's probably nothing that our PHP/SQL gurus can't handle.

Black-Ice · Post by **Black-Ice** » 18 Oct 2006, 11:51

A while back Cameron said he was going to update the site. Change the look and all... I think some suggested phpBB 3 or something...
Is that still gonna happen, coz that would probably solve this problem...

Post by **Ron2K** » 18 Oct 2006, 14:52

phpBB3 is still in beta.

I've been playing around on it on my box at home, and I'm very impressed. There's still work to be done before it goes final, though.

(If I get enough PMs I might consider setting up something on a webserver that I have access to so that you can get a look at it.)

rustypup · Post by **rustypup** » 18 Oct 2006, 15:20

i'm still shocked to discover that the dbms would permit anyone to delete active relational keys from the db... 8O that's just begging for transaction corruption... (unless of course no relational UML/DML was used in the first place... which is also likely...)

hopefully something they would have looked at correcting by now?

Post by **Ron2K** » 18 Oct 2006, 15:31

Well, phpBB is supposed to, if a user is deleted, convert that user's posts to guest posts. I don't know, maybe this is an old version where it doesn't work properly.

(Note to mods and admins: do NOT post what version of phpBB this board is running - it's a big security risk.)

SLIP · Post by **SLIP** » 18 Oct 2006, 15:43

Well lets just hope it gets fixed one day....

jee · Post by **jee** » 18 Oct 2006, 16:30

puppi, if you are facing (at 6 am in the morning) EVERY forum and EVERY thread with a rather rude homosexual pic that even i blanced at you have to decide rather quickly if you are going to have time to delete them all.. or do the most hobbible of all... delete the poster.

Sometimes the no-no is the only thing that works,... but then.. if one uses the "search" option like it should all should be well... ')

Richard_ · Post by **Richard_** » 18 Oct 2006, 16:46

Ron2K wrote:(Note to mods and admins: do NOT post what version of phpBB this board is running - it's a big security risk.)

phpBB 2.0.10

Any yes, it is a security risk, because it's easy to find loopholes if they exist for a given version.

[edit] and quite ironically, there does exist an exploit for this version of phpBB where server commands can be executed remotely... Most likely though, a patch has been applied by Cameron.

rustypup · Post by **rustypup** » 18 Oct 2006, 17:02

jee wrote:puppi, if you are facing (at 6 am in the morning) EVERY forum and EVERY thread with a rather rude homosexual pic

nononono.. .the blame isn't on the user, (i would have done the same), ... it's the management system...

it should either prevent anyone from deleting a record with an active key, or, as ron2k suggested, replace it with a "dummy"... the fact that it does permit the deletion of active keys means the designer may have been a little careless in the application of the relational rule-set... because of the way they operate, relational databases rely on the dbms to ensure that the relational hierarchy remains intact.. this is supposed to prevent degradation or damage to the data. if the db has been reduced to 3rd/4th normal, the loss of a single key can have disasterous results...

(pm me if you would like to learn something boring/interesting about relational databases... it's a little too much to go into here

)....

jee · Post by **jee** » 18 Oct 2006, 18:42

Yeah, I understand (and would like to know more) about relational databases as i work on them every day.. i just don't thing management though that anyone would be so stupid to do such a thing

Welll... there is always a first time, ne? Even when warned... *grins*

Richard_ · Post by **Richard_** » 18 Oct 2006, 22:24

[edit] mmm. k. seems that cameron has patched all the holes on this version of phpBB, which is why he is probably not wanting to upgrade to a newer version, for fear of new holes.=.