Comments in threads begin turning blank after a while on vBulletin 5.7.1

[larabmic]

Hi, since upgrading to vBulletin 5.7.1 I seem to be hitting a case where after seeming a day or two on new threads all of the comments on that thread will turn blank... To normal members or those logged out, the comment entries in the thread appear as far as the date / user information but the actual comments/post do not appear. When viewing the page source, the comments are not being rendered in the HTML.

However, when I am logged in as admin, I see all of the posts just fine. Again, this seems to happen for threads after seemingly a day or two or at random...

For example, this post when opening in a private browser window shows all empty posts now but worked fine yesterday and when I am logged in as admin is still populating correctly:

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...firmware/page4

I haven't made any changes besides upgrading to vBulletin 5.7.1 when it came out and then shortly after that this problem is appearing. Not using any extra plugins and doesn't seem to be a theme issue since it occurs to threads randomly and is working fine as admin etc. Any ideas? Thanks!

UPDATE: I came across what seems to trigger this issue on vBulletin 5.7.1. I believe this issue propagates when a thread is moved. (I have these threads being started via RSS feed when a new article is published on the main website, a new discussion thread is started in a common forum. Usually a day or two later I move the thread to the respective category in the forums where it properly belongs.) It seems to be when a thread is moved that this behavior occurs of not being able to see the comments after the 1st post with what is described in my original post. All while continuing to show fine for me as the admin.

It may also be related that since vBulletin 5.7.1 when moving topics I frequently get: "Error moving threads. Please try again Error information: " 524 error No Reason Phrase"

[Wayne Luke]

At least one of the posts in the example thread provided are using white text on a white background.

What do these queries return:

SELECT * FROM text WHERE nodeid=1355886;
SELECT * FROM postedithistory WHERE nodeid=1355886;

[larabmic]

SQL data dump on SELECT * FROM text WHERE nodeid=1355886; is only:
--
-- Dumping data for table `text`
--

INSERT INTO `text` (`nodeid`, `previewtext`, `previewimage`, `previewvideo`, `imageheight`, `imagewidth`, `rawtext`, `pagetextimages`, `moderated`, `pagetext`, `htmlstate`, `allowsmilie`, `showsignature`, `attach`, `infraction`) VALUES
(1355886, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, 'Intel says it\'s not needed: see the update here https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022...least-for-now/', NULL, NULL, NULL, 'off', 0, 0, 0, 0);



For SELECT * FROM postedithistory WHERE nodeid=1355886; returned nothing, per phpMyAdmin - "MySQL returned an empty result set (i.e. zero rows)."

Thanks,
Michael

[Wayne Luke]

If you disable the ad in the first post of the topic do the replies show up?

[larabmic]

If you disable the ad in the first post of the topic do the replies show up?

No, unfortunately. Even with all ads disabled to not serve and no other external JS, I still cannot see the posts of those moved threads (unless I am logged in as my admin account).

[Wayne Luke]

Error 524 is a timeout specific to Cloudflare. I don't know how to make it provide more time but you should try to do that in Cloudflare's interface.

For the topics that you've moved, you should go to Maintenance → General Update Tools. Then run the Update Topic Information and Update Forum Information tools.

If those don't work, then your closure table is probably broken. It will need to be rebuilt with the "Scan Content Table" utility within tools.php.

[larabmic]

Error 524 is a timeout specific to Cloudflare. I don't know how to make it provide more time but you should try to do that in Cloudflare's interface.

For the topics that you've moved, you should go to Maintenance → General Update Tools. Then run the Update Topic Information and Update Forum Information tools.

If those don't work, then your closure table is probably broken. It will need to be rebuilt with the "Scan Content Table" utility within tools.php.

I just completed the Update Topic Information and Update Forum Information tasks. Unfortunately, the issue still persists.

Prior to doing the "Scan Content Table" utility, is it likely that the closure table is broken even with the behavior of me as admin when logged in able to see all of the posts still in the affected threads? When I am logged in it's still working fine, it's just for other users or those not logged in are these posts appearing blank.

As another anecdote if it helps, it looks like new posts being made in affected threads after moving are appearing fine. i.e. https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...hics-gsc/page4 on there the posts shown after 07 November 2022, 12:00 PM are showing up fine for all users it seems, does that correlate still to a broken closure table?

Thanks for your help.

[Wayne Luke]

I suspect that if you cleared your system cache, the may disappear.

The closure table contains records of the entire node tree from node 1 to the last comment. If it wasn't updated on move due to timeout issues, then things will fail on your site.

[larabmic]

I suspect that if you cleared your system cache, the may disappear.

The closure table contains records of the entire node tree from node 1 to the last comment. If it wasn't updated on move due to timeout issues, then things will fail on your site.

As in the Maintenance -> Clear System Cache? Just tried that and still exhibiting the same behavior. I'll go ahead then and try rebuilding the closure table today to see if that is finally the culprit. Thanks.

[larabmic]

I suspect that if you cleared your system cache, the may disappear.

The closure table contains records of the entire node tree from node 1 to the last comment. If it wasn't updated on move due to timeout issues, then things will fail on your site.

Apologies for the delay, ended up waiting for the weekend to take forums down, backup, and proceed with tools.php Scan Content Tables.

It's been finding a few issues, none of which were the threads where I noticed the problem, but fixing seems to fail... I'll see output such as:

vBulletin 5 Tools Scanning Link nodes 1308446 through 1358446 for invalid records.
Found defective node 1355909- fixing now.
invalid_query_parameters for deleteNode

But never fixes it... presumably due to the invalid query parameters error on the line below that? If I then manually go to admin CP and prune what associates to the reported defective node, it will then eventually find another defective node only to have the same invalid_query_parameters error. Is this expected? Or a bug in tools.php? So for now I stopped shorty of just going and manually pruning all affected 'defective' nodes... but still not clear at least as far as I got that for any of the threads for this problem reported (the defective nodes spotted so far tended to be from some time ago). Thanks.

[Wayne Luke]

Can't answer your questions. Please submit a Support Ticket. We will need direct access to the database and most likely the file system.