Posted by racer on December 30, 1998, at 17:39:24
In reply to Re: Problems (read only if technically minded :-), posted by Dr. Bob on December 30, 1998, at 8:33:38
> > Also, some of the dates on the files on this board were wrong: messages posted in early Dec had late Dec dates on them.
> Can you give me an example? That sure would be a new problem...
I went in on the day the board was down, and read directly from the message directory. I was looking for responses to my post, which I knew was written the day before, so I only picked out messages with the correct modification dates. Many of the earlier files that I looked at, though, were dated much earlier, and there were no new messages in their threads. I've never seen that happen before, so I don't know what it means. I do have several working boards using this script, and have had various problems with them on occasion, but this is a new one on me.On the other hand, you have a modified version of the script running here, so it might help if I could see precisely what modifications have been made. Are you using any addins from other sources to allow the features like email notification? Did you make the threading modifications yourself or through MSA or through someone else (like the Puppetmaster)? It's a weird one, especially since the "zeroing out" issue would be a server problem, not a script problem. (I'll say it again, I've used almost a dozen scripts to set up bulletin boards now, and this is by far my favorite script. It may not be perfect, but it comes dang close. In fact, my only real complaint is that Matt is about 19 now, and that drives me crazy! How dare he be so good, so young? And that obviously doesn't have much to do with that script...)
> >Hm... I also notice today that some of the threads are very different: DL's answer to me is now a separate thread, though it was part of the main thread on Sunday.
> I think it was that way only very transiently, after I first resurrected the main page, because of some duplicate posts (one would get added to the thread it was supposed to, but the other would just be left over and therefore get treated like a new thread).
Nope, they're still there in that same spot.
> > Lastly, MSA's board script has a known gremlin that can eat some messages. If two people post a message at the precise same moment, they'll both get the same msg ID, and only one will be visible. Both titles will appear on the board, but only one message is actually there.
> Some posts do seem to have been eaten, but I don't think in the above way (I haven't seen different posts with the same ID). I think that was one bug I did manage to catch.
Nope. It's a common bug, and sites with a larger volumn are more prone to it. I've had good luck avoiding it using CGIWrap, but nothing really eliminates it. It's one of the things you just live with.That does bring up another question though: can you move to using CGIWrap on this page? If so, it eliminates a few potential problem areas right from the start. You won't need to open your script to the world, you can protect your data and your directories better, and so on. Talk to your sys admin about it, and if they don't have it set up, you should be able to set it up yourself. Barring that, of course, you could do what I did to begin with: leave the 777 permissions on the board files, and put the whole thing into a directory with a 711 on it. That way, the casual hacker can't read anything in the directories, but the board script is still accessible to the users.
> Thanks for trying to figure this out. Let me know if you have any other ideas...
Hey, the official racer transient cure for depression: distraction. What a concept, I love computers and love to troubleshoot. This was therapuetic for me. But don't bill me, doc, on accounta I still can't pay...
> Bob
poster:racer
thread:1824
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990101/msgs/1902.html