Go back to previous page
Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: The Forum Itself
Topic ID: 85
#0, If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by Gryphon on Apr-26-14 at 01:36 PM
It may happen that you run across a thread that is experiencing one of the failure states we saw in last week's difficulties. The more severe of the two (duplicated subject with "-1" replies showing) is more obvious both from the forum side and the backend, but the other one doesn't really manifest itself until someone tries to read the root post of a thread. If you click a thread from the topic list of a forum and get a page that's empty except for the header, don't panic; back up and try "[View All]" if available. (I haven't seen this happen to a thread that doesn't have enough replies to make that visible; possibly it only happens to "viewmode=threaded".)

Also, if this happens, you could help us out a bit by checking here to see if it's been reported, and if not, posting the URL to the affected thread, so that we can investigate and hopefully fix it up.

Currently known problems:

http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=272&forum=DCForumID25&viewmode=threaded

http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=347&forum=DCForumID16&viewmode=threaded

Thanks,
--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#1, RE: If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by Peter Eng on Jun-18-14 at 12:38 PM
In response to message #0
http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=1080&forum=DCForumID11

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


#2, RE: If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by Proginoskes on Jun-22-14 at 09:30 PM
In response to message #0
The new TLOK board appears to be even wonkier than the rest of the forum. Attempting to sort threads by last update results in an arbitrary order instead. Additionally, the most recent thread affects the board's row on the forum index, but isn't showing up in the thread list.

#3, RE: If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by Gryphon on Jun-22-14 at 09:59 PM
In response to message #2
>The new TLOK board appears to be even wonkier than the rest of the
>forum. Attempting to sort threads by last update results in an
>arbitrary order instead.

I think that's just because all the threads currently in it were moved there from another board, and DCF doesn't juggle the timestamps properly when that happens. The topics that have had traffic since the move are ordered correctly.

Although that said,

>Additionally, the most recent thread affects
>the board's row on the forum index, but isn't showing up in the thread
>list.

That's actually a different Stupid DCF Trick. Jeanne created a new thread under the TLOK board about the upcoming start date for the third season of the Legend of Korra TV show yesterday, but I moved it to Source Material because it's not really germane to Legacy. DCF doesn't know to update the lobby listings when that happens.

Anyway, nothing to worry about - both of these behaviors are known DCF quirks that long predate the recent troubles. "Broken as designed," as we used to say of the stupid balance tweaks in City of Heroes. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#4, RE: If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by JeanneHedge on Jun-24-14 at 12:37 PM
In response to message #3
>>Additionally, the most recent thread affects
>>the board's row on the forum index, but isn't showing up in the thread
>>list.
>
>That's actually a different Stupid DCF Trick. Jeanne created a
>new thread under the TLOK board about the upcoming start date for the
>third season of the Legend of Korra TV show yesterday, but I
>moved it to Source Material because it's not really germane to
>Legacy. DCF doesn't know to update the lobby listings when
>that happens.

I really truly didn't mean to break the forum, cross my heart!

>Anyway, nothing to worry about -

Well all righty then.


Jeanne


Jeanne Hedge
http://www.jhedge.com
1st Courier of the Heavenly Prophets for Tianxia
"Never give up, never surrender!"



#5, RE: If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by Sofaspud on Sep-08-14 at 12:36 PM
In response to message #0
Was poking around rereading particularly enjoyable bits and I think

http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=51&forum=DCForumID3

has been munged, though it doesn't appear to be in the same fashion as the other threads herein. The first post appears to have eaten the majority of the story itself, with two different browsers showing the same results. It appears to be breaking in the third paragraph after the "Saturday, June 28" header.

I'm hoping the text of this is safe, somewhere. I'd like to read it again :)

--sofaspud
--


#6, RE: If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by zwol on Jan-09-15 at 01:34 PM
In response to message #5
I was just coming here to post the same thing! I see

> ... Ibuki-ryû Kaget�ded auburn hair, and a note.

where the bulk of the story has disappeared into that � character. In the raw HTML, instead of an actual � (U+FFFD REPLACEMENT CHARACTER) there are 49,152 bytes of binary zeroes. I would guess that this is a case of straight-up disk corruption: 49,152 bytes is exactly 96 512-byte sectors, and in my experience, a chunk of data being replaced with binary zeroes is the most common visible symptom of bad disk sectors in the middle of a file.

Fun fact: the raw HTML for every DCForum thread contains two complete copies of the first message in the thread -- for reasons probably lost to time at this point, the software copies the full text of "reply 0" into an invisible <META NAME="Keywords"> tag (sans HTML formatting codes). In this case, both copies are corrupted in exactly the same way, which leads me to believe that the corruption is in the database (or whatever DCForum uses instead of a database) rather than in any cached rendered HTML it may have.

I too hope there is a good copy somewhere.


#7, RE: If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by Gryphon on Mar-03-15 at 01:40 AM
In response to message #6
>I too hope there is a good copy somewhere.

Alas, The Contract proved unrecoverable from the Forum backups, and though I was sure I had written it offline, I couldn't find the source file anywhere.

Until tonight.

Rather than put it on the Forum again, I decided to mark it up for the HTML stylesheet I developed last year and put it in the main WL index instead. You can find it here.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#8, RE: If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by JeanneHedge on Mar-03-15 at 08:32 AM
In response to message #7
If I may suggest, when reporting a broken thread why not post what the thread was, especially if it's a story with a title? I did not know what this was all about until the title "The Contract" was mentioned in today's message. Don't know if it would have been of use 7 months ago (and it's of no use now that the story's been re-released with style sheets), but I had a copy of the original html story, as posted to the forum.

Jeanne


Jeanne Hedge
http://www.jhedge.com
1st Courier of the Heavenly Prophets for Tianxia
"Never give up, never surrender!"



#9, RE: If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by VoidRandom on Jan-10-16 at 09:50 PM
In response to message #0
LAST EDITED ON Jan-10-16 AT 09:51 PM (EST)
 
Not sure if this is actually broken or not, but
http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=229&forum=DCForumID25&viewmode=threaded
appears to be cut off, with the last sentence in the header post coming to an early halt. There are also no comments, which seems unlikely for a post on the IPS Normandy.

-VR
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."


#10, RE: If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by VoidRandom on Jul-18-17 at 07:56 AM
In response to message #0
http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=303&forum=DCForumID9&viewmode=threaded truncated

-VR
Insert Saying Here
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."


#11, RE: If You Find a Broken Thread
Posted by VoidRandom on May-16-22 at 10:39 AM
In response to message #0
http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=226&forum=DCForumID25&viewmode=threaded

first post text messed up, looks like encoded html

-VR
Insert Saying Here
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."