Bag of Bugs

[Contra Fates]

Recently the big board I'm an Admin at has upgraded from VB3.8 to VB4.2 (current version), with some disastrous results. At first the issues were minor, but now we have a lot of strange bugs surfacing and little feedback from VB Support thus far. I figured it couldn't hurt to see if anyone here has had any experience with the following issues:

1.) E-Mail Notifications Won't Work.
For some reason, vBulletin's cron job that sends e-mails is actually blocking the outgoing e-mail relay. Whenever I unblock it, I can manually send emails directly from server shell until vBulletin blocks it again.

2.) Disappearing Posts & Threads.
We have threads that will vanish completely, as well as posts. They seem to still be present in the database, but not on the forum. I think it's an index problem, but the issue there is that rebuilding those indexes takes over 7 hours (the forum has over 7 million posts and 150,000+ threads), and any interruption could mess up the forum even further.

3.) Randomly Moderated Users & Posts.
Some new users are getting thrown into a Moderation Queue, despite no settings being enabled to allow this. Some posts are also randomly being thrown into Moderation when it's not enabled.

4.) Random Thread Subscriptions
Users have reported their Subscriptions being filled with threads they have not subscribed to.

Any suggestions would be very much recommended. The forum is huge, and the database alone is 15GB, so this creates some issues when it comes to trouble shooting. Thanks in advance!

[cellarius]

When running such a big forum, I'm sure you know that support is given primarily at vbulletin.com, and that a ticket will probably your best choice given the nature of your forum and issues.

[Contra Fates]

Originally Posted by cellarius

When running such a big forum, I'm sure you know that support is given primarily at vbulletin.com, and that a ticket will probably your best choice given the nature of your forum and issues.

I'm aware of that, I mentioned in OP that we've already put in Tickets regarding these issues, but have not received any solutions.

My aim is to hopefully have some suggestions to try in the meantime. Some of these issues are a bit crippling.

[Adam H]

Originally Posted by Contra Fates

Recently the big board I'm an Admin at has upgraded from VB3.8 to VB4.2 (current version), with some disastrous results. At first the issues were minor, but now we have a lot of strange bugs surfacing and little feedback from VB Support thus far. I figured it couldn't hurt to see if anyone here has had any experience with the following issues:

1.) E-Mail Notifications Won't Work.
For some reason, vBulletin's cron job that sends e-mails is actually blocking the outgoing e-mail relay. Whenever I unblock it, I can manually send emails directly from server shell until vBulletin blocks it again.

2.) Disappearing Posts & Threads.
We have threads that will vanish completely, as well as posts. They seem to still be present in the database, but not on the forum. I think it's an index problem, but the issue there is that rebuilding those indexes takes over 7 hours (the forum has over 7 million posts and 150,000+ threads), and any interruption could mess up the forum even further.

3.) Randomly Moderated Users & Posts.
Some new users are getting thrown into a Moderation Queue, despite no settings being enabled to allow this. Some posts are also randomly being thrown into Moderation when it's not enabled.

4.) Random Thread Subscriptions
Users have reported their Subscriptions being filled with threads they have not subscribed to.

Any suggestions would be very much recommended. The forum is huge, and the database alone is 15GB, so this creates some issues when it comes to trouble shooting. Thanks in advance!

This is literally a shot in the dark with out actually seeing the board or having access to anything these are the things i would do first and foremost :

1. Try switching off the Mail-queue System or try locking , i had a board not long ago which completely froze up because of the load generated by the queue system

2. Same suggestion as id imagine you will get from VB, run all of the counters, ensuring they finish, on a board your size id think it will take a day or more for the search index to rebuild , you can leave it running in the back ground with out any problems, normally i do that kind of thing on another computer so i dont accidentally click off the page.

Might also be worth repairing/optimising the database but please make sure you have a full backup before doing so and have your server admin around just incase it doesnt go well.

3. Are you sure you havent got anything like a spam protection like glowhost spam-o-matic or akismet enabled in the admincp ? not saying you havent checked but i would be double checking just in case.

4. See if this still happens after you've done number 2. Could be a mismatch somewhere down the line.

Id also be tempted to run the 4.2 upgrade again to make sure everything went ok, again backup before doing it.

Like i said with looking at it you would be shooting in the dark and thinking of the most obvious stuff. I maybe of some help , it may not.

Good luck

[Lynne]

1. Check if you have a backlog of queued emails (Admincp front page > Number of Queued E-Mails)

2. Check to see Forum Manager > edit Forum > Default View Age

3. Check if Akismet is running and if the settings are OK - AdminCP > Settings > Options > Spam Management

4. No idea, sorry.