Site down May 11

[Stanley]

You probably noticed the site was down. I'm posting this main ly just to see whether I can do it. I've had a word with Pluggy and he's fixed the major problems but some may still be hanging about so if you log onto a topic and it comes up with an error, ignore it, they will hopefully go away as we get back to normal.
(That worked OK so lets hope the rest straighten themselves ouit)

[Pluggy]

I was looking around in the admin control panel yesterday around noon. And the site decided to glitch whilst I was there, I swear I didn't do anything, but when I logged out of the admin control, it became very apparent there was something seriously wrong. The admin control was all that was left working. After trying and failing to get it back, I rang Doc, who gallantly stepped in and got the site back to where it its now.

[Bodger]

Thank you both for getting us back online

[Whyperion]

If one is not logged in , the permissions to view images have gone ( getting the default you are not authorised to view this image ) , does not bother me , but it might be worth fixing at some time

[Stanley]

Another glitch has cropped up. The portal is refusing access to anyone who is not already logged in so don't log out! Pluggy is looking at it.

[Stanley]

It refused access again this morning even though I was not looged out yesterday. Got in through the back door by Googling a site topic then logging in. The search feature wasn't working yesterday but it is OK now. The site is doing strange things.... Still getting an image bar above posted images and is it my imagination or have they defaulted to 600 instead of 800?

[PanBiker]

I think you are right on the image sizing Stanley, they are smaller, they used to be 800.

[PanBiker]

I have just noticed that the Last Post entries on the forum page no longer show the topic that they refer to.

[Pluggy]

The crash on Saturday, mangled both the php files and the sql database it seems. Doc put the PHP back, I've been working out whats wrong with the SQL today. I think I've sorted the Portal Issue and people not being able to find the site. Logging in as an alternative user on my computer so I don't have any OGFB login cookies active and googling barlick and clicking the link brings the portal up now.

[PanBiker]

A step in the right direction Pluggy, any indication of what actually went wrong to cause the crash? SQL is normally quite resilient or is at least designed to be.

[Pluggy]

I was in the admin panel at the time looking at the details of all the add ons. When I logged out is when it seemed to screw up. I did not make any changes ( at least I was aware of). The permissions of of groups and membership of some groups was affected in the SQL. Until a few minutes ago the 4 Mods were a member of of 'Users awaiting Activation'. The anonymous user wasn't a member of the guests group and guests access was set throughout to 'No role defined' - That was screwing the Portal when not logged in. The SQL database is very reminiscent of the Windows Registry, you make a change somewhere and something entirely non related ceases working........

[PanBiker]

The nature of Relational Databases I suppose. High level language sitting on top of a complex database structure. Designed to manage it but when things go wrong they can go wrong in a big way. The recovery aspects of the indexing were always the plus points pushed for the model.

[Stanley]

There's no doubt Pluggy is getting to grips with what has gone wrong and from what he intimated to me in a mail this morning he's looking at some fairly radical measures to get things straight. It's up to him to explain them but I think he's right and support his projected actions.
The portal worked normally this morning..... However, the site search facility is being a bit perverse, it works normally for 'wheezes' but won't search for 'cunning'!
I don't like the mention of the phantom user......