vBulletin Crashing Database each morning

[hilaryl]

Originally Posted by Mark.B

It's not just about bugs, your site is *definitely* insecure at the moment due to unpatched security issues. To patch those you need to upgrade.

Is this the case even if we have the latest patch's for our version?

[CAG CheechDogg]

I had this happen to me a while back, about a year or so ago maybe a bit longer and the issue was search bots hitting our site like fire ants .... the main ones were:

AhrefsBot
Baiduspider
Ezooms
MJ12bot
YandexBot

I used Ban Spiders by User Agent to help with this issue ... now these bots and others don't hit the search feature which is something others around here will say doesn't happen with bots ...

If it worked for me I am sure it will work for you... there is also other things you can do to limit and reduce the amount of hits on your search feature.... you also want to check your mods to see if they are updated .. some modes can attract unwanted activity and actions on your forums ....

And about upgrading .... if you are careful with your site, forums and stay on top of security and suspicious behaviour you don't need to upgrade at all ... I don't mean to insult any of the previous individuals who say you should upgrade but it is not necessary to do so at all ....

[Lynne]

Originally Posted by hilaryl

Is this the case even if we have the latest patch's for our version?

Yes. Only 4.2.2 and 4.2.3 have the latest security fixes. http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...-2-2-and-4-2-3

[TheLastSuperman]

Limited space as someone said above and on rare occasions it could be related to spam, check the session table for an insane amount of entries (30k+ records) because once it hits around 30k records the session table is nothing but trouble and you need to truncate the table.

I'm pretty sure the disk space is the factor as Marv mentioned, tracing down the issue before attempting a fix is the best way to go about this though. As the others said upgrade to 4.2.2 in the least as 4.2.3 is still marked as Beta.

[tbworld]

Originally Posted by CAG CheechDogg

And about upgrading .... if you are careful with your site, forums and stay on top of security and suspicious behaviour you don't need to upgrade at all ... I don't mean to insult any of the previous individuals who say you should upgrade but it is not necessary to do so at all ....

I have looked at the latest patches to vBulletin and although I have not tried to exploit the possible vulnerabilities, it does seem prudent to make the changes. When vBulletin releases their patched distribution, script kiddies get to work and try to exploit older boards that have not upgraded. Granted most of the script kiddies aren't the brightest, but it only takes one to release an attacking script.

Everything else I agree with you. Your still the man.

[CAG CheechDogg]

Originally Posted by tbworld

I have looked at the latest patches to vBulletin and although I have not tried to exploit the possible vulnerabilities, it does seem prudent to make the changes. When vBulletin releases their patched distribution, script kiddies get to work and try to exploit older boards that have not upgraded. Granted most of the script kiddies aren't the brightest, but it only takes one to release an attacking script.

Everything else I agree with you. Your still the man.

I hear you tbworld ... thanks for the little props lol ... And I was thinking after my post and for those who aren't as active and "savvy" maybe as most of us it would be best for them to update or upgraded to the latest version with patches ...

It was not at all smart or considerate of myself to say that upgrading is not necessary and I apologize to everyone ... because we should all upgrade and install the patches regardless of our experience to "avoid" headaches later on ...

So I am really truly sorry you guys ...

[tbworld]

You are being too hard on yourself. I think in general you were referring to upgrades not vulnerability patches. In this case I just happened to be snooping at the changes they made in the code from v4.2.2 to v4.2.3. I'm a big snoop!

You do way more good around here then any slight miswording error. I have to retreive my own foot out of my mouth at least once a day. I was trying to inform, not cast judgement, I am sorry if it felt that way.

[RichieBoy67]

I second that.

Don't worry about Cheech!

[hilaryl]

Hi everyone,

First of all - thanks for all your feedback and suggestions. It has definitely helped to isolate where we should be looking, and what we should be looking for.

After some trial and error testing, we did find that during our nightly database back-ups, we were running out of space on the server. This caused somewhat of a chain effect which was congesting our mysql database, effectively shutting it down. Somewhere in that chain, the 'searchcore_text' table was trying to be optimised, and because of a lack of space, this couldn't complete and left the table corrupt.

We will obviously need to upgrade the space on our server - which is our next step.

The 'searchcore_text' was a contributor to our issue, but only because of the sheer size of the table. We will potential have to look at making this smaller without jeopardising the search function of our forum.

And then look at upgrading to the latest vBulletin.

Thanks again,
hilaryl

[Marv]

Originally Posted by hilaryl

Hi everyone,

First of all - thanks for all your feedback and suggestions. It has definitely helped to isolate where we should be looking, and what we should be looking for.

After some trial and error testing, we did find that during our nightly database back-ups, we were running out of space on the server. This caused somewhat of a chain effect which was congesting our mysql database, effectively shutting it down. Somewhere in that chain, the 'searchcore_text' table was trying to be optimised, and because of a lack of space, this couldn't complete and left the table corrupt.

We will obviously need to upgrade the space on our server - which is our next step.

The 'searchcore_text' was a contributor to our issue, but only because of the sheer size of the table. We will potential have to look at making this smaller without jeopardising the search function of our forum.

And then look at upgrading to the latest vBulletin.

Thanks again,
hilaryl

Good to hear you were able to figure that out. We had ourselfs a hard night until we stumbled over the disk quota issue, when we run into that. Nice to get a feedback that we could help you out getting back in the tracks.