BARF database corruption?

[rodr]

I see BARF uses vBulletin 3.8.7, but there are later 3.8.x releases. Might be good to upgrade to the most recent of those; should be free right? The point of course is to take advantage of bug fixes.

Also make sure the PHP and MySQL versions used are compatible with the particular release.

Also see if the Admin control panel has a place to do things like re-sync the post counts.

[Climber]

Originally Posted by rodr

Also see if the Admin control panel has a place to do things like re-sync the post counts.

This.

I'm guessing they handle the normal user delete own post, but other actions might not be updating the postcount.

[tzrider]

FWIW, we've reset the counters several times. It works for a few posts and then the issue with the "thinking" thread pops up again.

I have a few other ideas, so will keep plugging away at them.

[NorCalBusa]

Originally Posted by tzrider

FWIW, we've reset the counters several times. It works for a few posts and then the issue with the "thinking" thread pops up again.

I have a few other ideas, so will keep plugging away at them.

I know nothing about such things Andy.

Oddly I do recall Andy (@SBR) emphatically stopping big threads at 500 (?) posts and would then create a second thread. Something about the database engine, the blinker fluid, flugal joint, search or some damn thing worked better. He's since switched to new Forum software a couple years ago now- not sure if they're still on it.

[DataDan]

^ Yeah, limiting post count seems like a reasonable workaround.

The "thinking" thread has more than 50,000 posts--twice as many as the next biggest one I found--and is the only one with more than 32,767 (upper limit of signed 16-bit integer). Programming intuition suggests that's a possible problem.

Since impact is so limited, splitting that thread would make sense. Maybe also keep an eye on "Animated GIFs" in Pics & Vids with more than 25,000.

[ctwo]

Who would use a signed variable for a post counter?

[berth]

Originally Posted by ctwo

Who would use a signed variable for a post counter?

And would PHP even use a 16 bit integer in this day and age?

[Abacinator]

Originally Posted by DataDan

^ Yeah, limiting post count seems like a reasonable workaround.

The "thinking" thread has more than 50,000 posts--twice as many as the next biggest one I found--and is the only one with more than 32,767 (upper limit of signed 16-bit integer). Programming intuition suggests that's a possible problem.

Since impact is so limited, splitting that thread would make sense. Maybe also keep an eye on "Animated GIFs" in Pics & Vids with more than 25,000.

Isn't the Post Whore thread purged at some regular interval?

[DataDan]

Originally Posted by berth

And would PHP even use a 16 bit integer in this day and age?

vBulletin 3 was first released in 2004. It's not exactly a "this day and age" product.

[DataDan]

Originally Posted by ctwo

Who would use a signed variable for a post counter?

You're welcome to use your own programming experience and intuition to guess at a solution.

[tzrider]

The error that we're seeing is sometimes associated with certain plugins (we don't use the one that is most commonly an issue) as well as certain nginx versions.

While I don't know for sure, I don't think those causes are going to be the problem in this instance.

Trimming the thread is a possibility if it comes to that, though it would undermine one of the original purposes of the thread; to be able to easily scan back over years to see what you (or someone else) was thinking at the time.

[ctwo]

Originally Posted by DataDan

You're welcome to use your own programming experience and intuition to guess at a solution.

wasn't meant as a dig. would be interested in the cause of the issue though.

[rodr]

Sounds oddly like a problem with concurrent access. Big threads are more likely to have 2 or more people posting in them at the same time.

I say "oddly" because PHP setups typically run a web request to completion before starting another one. If some optimization was installed to defeat this, I would start by undoing whatever that was.

Have you reached out to vBulletin support to see what they say?

[tzrider]

We have some unusual plug-ins that are probably over support's head and possibly related to the current problem. I'm working with our sysadmin to determine next steps.

We're definitely not ignoring this but the issue may persist for a little while.

[W800]

Ping shows 74.116.248.212.

We use Cloudflare so that we are not directly on the internet. Everything goes through Cloudflare before us, and the Cloudflare edge servers deliver most of our content. We also locked down our backend site management pages so that they require 2FA. Some days, we get literally hundreds of attempted intrusions. And this is for just a few small sites.

Another nice thing about Cloudflare is you can block (or force a CAPTCHA) based on country, browser, IP range, user agent, etc. . . For example, anyone visiting our sites using TOR is presumed to not be within our target markets, and gets a browser challenge. We also block most robots, since we aren't concerned about indexing.

The result of the above is that our server loads are minimal. Another thing that we do sometimes is run yet another CDN at AWS S3 for content that doesn't change a lot. This also makes pages load fast for a second reason - browsers will only open a number of simultaneous threads/connections to a single site. But if you load that single site from several locations, it will load faster.

ETA: we also get a second level of security. By running through Cloudflare, people don't actually know who hosts us. It's AWS - no big secret, but our attack surface is smaller.