Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic OK Another issue found ....

It's been brought to my attention that a lot of the links in the TOCs aren't working as they should so tonight I'm going to run a re-indexing of the boards to see if that fixes the issue.

This time the boards will automatically close when I start at 11:30 PM EST and will re-open on their own when done. (This was I won't be a dork and forget to reopen them!)

Thanks!!

Hi Annette,

okay, there's the older-type links http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=002143;p=1#000000 that still worked before the last update
and the new types the previous version of the boards was already using in the URL bar: http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php/topics/172843

I'll be happy if a re-index fixes them but given that the topic ID differs and the URL-format, too, there is mild concern regarding this. It looks like the new format only exposes the post-id, not the thread ID and the old URL format may no longer be supported out of the box. That might be a breaking change not fixable by a re-index. I'm definitely be holding my breath, hoping we can salvage our TOCs and not need another re-write. Well, okay, not on the breath-holding since I'm not Superman taking a small canister of air out into space to deal with Nightfall and it's still 10-ish hours till the re-index.

Michael

Hi Annette,

I found a documentation on this here:
https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/u...bb-forum-to-new-url-structure#Post244213

Do we have the old-style files ultimate.php and ultimate.cgi files from the classic_6_7_import.zip already deployed and they don't work/are broken or are they missing. From the fact that I'm getting a blank page, I think they might be missing and might have been missing since the first big upgrade.

Michael

Michael, we shouldn't need to worry about the classic version at all. We had already been upgraded to 7.5.x. This was a minor upgrade, not major.

Hi Annette, ah, we've been already on 7? Okay thought it went classic, then v6, now v7. Okay possible explanation: Those extra files need to be re-applied after each upgrade.
Michael

I'm going to have to open another support ticket on this because neither option worked.

If there's a worse case senario that we can't get this fix from automation, what are the odds of getting a team together to go through and do a manual fix?

Support "ticket" is open

https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/263254#Post263254

Just to make sure, the files have been copied into the web folder /still there after the upgrade?

The worst case: I honestly don't know. Last time it was doable because at least we had the old ID we could still use.

Michael

I followed the README file and I can't FIND the directories they are talking about. I have the back up .gz I took before doing the upgrade so I untarred in on my PC and did a search for this one directory they say we need to use and it's not there. I posted the link to the support thread I started so we'll see what they come back with.

That's all I can do right now. We'd run into this problem at some point because we were still running on PHP 5.x and I had no choice but to move to at least 7.0 until I get two other sites that I host for paying customers upgraded and then I can move to php 7.3. However, being on 7.0 give us a lot more time than being on 5.x

Thanks for all the work! Great to hear you got the backup. Looking forward to having support do their work.

Anyhow, you mentioned 'folder' not 'file'. Since I only have the info from the ubb-forum, wouldn't the two files be located right next to the ubbthreads.php file? Or, failing that, *is* there a ubbyhteads.php file in the backup? And an ultimate.cgi and ultimate.php anywhere in the backup? Otherwise, how did this work before the last upgrade...

Got some automation ideas for the worst case scenario. Say, do you have read access to the database? Could do this just over the web but read access makes it simpler. In theory, we could then also do a data update directly, but I still got scruples there.

Michael

This is right from the README file"

"Place the classic_import.php script into the importers directory and bring it up in your browser. Follow the instructions to import your classic forum."

There is no importers directory.

Thanks. I can't say for certain that this isn't a documentation breakdown, but it does look like we're referring to two different things. I'm talking about a '6_7_import.zip' containing an ultimateubb.php and possibly an ultimateubb.php file. There might also be a redirect in the htaccess file. The import.php the readme mentions sounds like it's meant to do something else. Or it's the redirect target for both ultimateubb files. When I'm back at a real computer I need to check the response we get when opening an old style link. The visible page is blank, but what's the http status code?

Michael

Micheal, those files exists, too, and that's why I need clarification from support.

Hi Annette,

thanks for confirming. I've now also been able to check the response codes. The ultimateubb.php returns the white page and status code 500, while some other path, e.g. ultimateubb1.php gives us a 404 response. So, yeah, looks like the ultimateubb.php is simply broken. While we're waiting for Support to get back on this, do you have access to the server log. Usually, server side errors should get logged so we can do some diagnostics. It might just be that the ultimateubb.php needs to be updated to work with the latest version of the board's internal APIs.

If we can get this to work via Support, that will be great since it removes the immediate stress, but the more I'm thinking about things, the more I'm thinking once we are done here and things are quiet on the home front, we should look into an automated update of all the TOCs and links inside the posts to solve this mess permanently.

Michael

OK, so he gave me a suggestion and I've done what he has asked. No your page still does not work; however, I've gone back 4 years and it's working. Maybe yours is a different issue? However, to me it now looks like links are working.

If it's just your post, maybe you can edit it manually?

Again, you can see our conversation here:

https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/263257

Edited to say that you might have checked while I was making the changes ... I don't know. If it's only a handful of posts now, then a manual fix is the way to go.

Support even said that this fix can be hit or miss.

Hi Annette!

The TOCs: checked several TOCs (2014 and 2003) and didn't find any with the "ultimateubb.php get_topic" format that worked. Four years back might already have had the new format. The switch was at the start of May 2014:

One of the last TOC with the old format: http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ubbthre...wer-by-lady-loisette-complete#Post172857

One of the first TOC with the new format: http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ubbthre...-on-the-way-cristina-complete#Post253595

I skimmed the support post and I'm not 100% convinced and/or didn't catch all the intricacies. Of course, not seeing the source code and not having a test system makes it more difficult to evaluate all the information presented by the support guy. My spidysense does tell me, that the ultimateubb.php file should be able to handle all the old URLs so long as all pertinent information is still there in the URL and the database. The rest is just a matter of mapping the data. So, possibly the file provided by UBB isn't sophisticated enough to do all the heavy lifting. And this is where we circle back to the beginning of the paragraph.

So to go back to the earlier questions: do you have SQL access to the database and copy/save the result to a CSV file? That way, we can (hopefully) extract the mapping between posts and threads and use that to rebuild the correct links. Given I'm not a PHP guy (C# /.NET for the win!) and don't want to mess with the system details of the compatibility file, doing this via the web UI feels like the much safer approach.

One last bit: maybe switching the search_friendly to 0 might do the trick, given the TOC links are all in the not-search-friendly format.

Michael

Micheal, support made me shut search_friendly off and yes I have access to the DB.

Sorry, yesterday was spent putting my laptop back together. The manufacturer replaced a memory card that apparently blew when the whole laptop crashed last week.

It would be a nightmare trying to match the old URls to what they are now.
They would each be unique and you would need to search for the replacement posts to get the url for each one.

I posted at ubbcentral some more info about the replacement files for redirects
Give it a look:
https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/u...edirects-to-ubb-classic-urls#Post263260.

Hi RubenRocha,

thanks. I'm thinking (without having looked at the database layout yet, so that might still be a bust) that I extract a dump with the thread-ids matched to the post-ids. This assumes the thread-id still exist in the database. With that mapping table, I should be able to patch all the links to get_topic we still have. We might lose the post position within the thread, but that is the lesser of two evils.

Annette, I'll send you a mail regarding the query details sometime during the weekend.

Michael

In the meantime some of us are going through our old TOCs and just fixing them - luckily the search does work to find older threads.

Dandello, I've just mailed Annette about the database stuff, so things have started on that front, too. I, like all the other FoLCs am very appreciative of all the hard work done with fixing them manually. That said, and I'm not 100% sure yet how the database stuff turns out and how my spare time will be set up, but there is a fair chance that I can have an automated update program done by the end of November (RL permitting) or, worst case, over the holidays. Most of the TOCs refer to stories already on the archives (the TOCs should be fine since May 2014) so maybe waiting a bit until we know more about the viability of the automated solution could spare us a lot of man hours doing this by hand.

Michael

Okay, new development: we might be able to shave some more time off the automation-solution. If this holds up in the light of day, we might be able to have the links patched by early November or sometime mid-November at the latest. More infos as the story unfolds over the weekend

Michael

I think this is working now.
But I don't understand the jargon here.
So somebody needs to test them.That they are going to the proper post

Caveats

Browser cache may still be in play.
Only links with http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php are working now.
Bear in mind that you will get errors if the original post in the url was moved or deleted and nobody went to the reference post and updated.

Also I see some reference to another site like zoom something which was another forum board they will never work without manual intervention.
zoomway/cgi-bin/boards/ultimatebb.cgi

Let me know.

I will look into the oldest ones which used http://www.lcficmbs.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi
But I have to find some to view.
They probably are the very oldest.
Don't get your hopes up on this item.

Hi Ruben,

Thanks, did a representative sample test (I hope) and the links that should work, do.

Michael

Okay.
Just remember that some post numbers will be different.
It is the content that matters.

Now I just need to go figure out what I changed and try to get UBB to update the redirect download.After I see what I can do with the cgi file..

FYI,
The original redirect file that she implemented was correct it just needed some changes in the code.
To make it work.
The second file was hosed, Probably a desperation attempt.

http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ubbthre...hottest-team-in-town-complete#Post170803

This thread has CGI links local to our forum. We never did get around to update all of them looks like.

Michael

I will look at it tomorrow.
But cgi is not my forte.

I noticed that when I try to click the "Lois & Clark Forum" link in the lilac-ish colored navigation bar on the top of any page, it tries to access http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php and I get a 404 error. Although it is still possible to get to the main page by clicking on the "Lois & Clark Fanfic Message Boards" graphic in the upper-left corner of any page, it would be nice to be able to use the navigation bar's bread crumbs.

No hurry on this one, but I thought you'd want to know.

- Lynn

It must be your browser cache.
There are no navigation links on this page that has cgi-bin except for talking points in the posts now.

Hello Ruben,

Problem solved. Thank you.

I should have thought of clearing the cache myself.

Joy,
Lynn