donnamb 

So the tech guy checked in with me and I at least have something for you. He has diagnosed the problem (please don't ask me to explain ). He is now in the stage of planning a fix. Apparently it's a challenging issue, so please be patient with us.

I find that if I log out and log back in, I usually won't get the blank screen when I try a search.

East Hill

Interesting solution! I'll try that next time, AND be patient .

East Hill

yoplait

I'll try to be patient as well. I've tried searching on 3 browsers Safari, Camino, and Firefox.

My main browser is Safari 3.0.4

SweetLou

It has nothing to do with the browser or the operating system. I have no idea what the problem is, but my guess would be "kill words". When these words are used in a search, it will stop the search, leaving only the blank page. This is often done so that the database server doesn't get all tied up in a search.
An example on this site of a kill word seems to be "bicycle". Try it, type "bicycle" in the search and you will always get the blank page. You might think that the search feature is broken, nope it is a feature. Wait the required 30 seconds and do a new search, for something like "fish" and you will get the results.

markjenn

This has been discussed in other forums. It has nothing to do with your browser or what client you are on. It appears to be related to whether you're searching on terms that are very common - if the number of "hits" for any term is above a threshold, the search engine quits and dumps you to the blank page.

- Mark

cuda2k

Just a little update that there is a long term fix being looked at that should (hopefully) be ready to go within the week. One of the admins should be posting an announcement about it as the details get set. Just wanted to let you all know that this issue had not been forgotten.

JayC

Im having the same issue with Firefox

markjenn

The only way to test this is to run IE and Firefox side-by-side entering the same terms. I've done this and believe me, they do EXACTLY the same thing. If you want to test the failure in Firefox (or any other browser), simply do:

Search The Forums > Key Word(s): "Bicycle" > Search Now

You'll get the blank page each and every time no matter what browser you're running. It has NOTHING to do with the browser - the problem is with the server.

- Mark

Brian

You don't really do a search for the word "bicycle", do you?

Rollfast

Sounds like somebody treated certain familiar terms like one would 'and' 'the' 'a' and so on as they would be under a simplified algebriac/whatever search, as common and unnecessary terms that had default meanings and left out the message about them being so and being excluded. The strange part is that they should stop any search or at the least they would prompt a query to continue without or simply a message they were removed or changed.

PS "Bicycle playing cards" and "Bicycle shorts" would logically register in a search for Bicycle if they were relevant in the database. BICYCLE is a brand/trademark for cards and somebody playing Pinochle might mention buying a new deck of Bicycle cards for the event.

I fully realize that the permutations would overload the server of a BICYCLE website, so some intelligent design to limit the posts to those where bicycle did not logically lead to a bicycle concept...

YEAH. EINSTEIN TIME.

Nobody pays me to come up with this stuff, thank god.

SweetLou

I am sure there are many people that do just that. Probably not just "bicycle" but something like "bicycle chain removal" This would kill the script.

Most likely, the problem has to do with php memory allocation. Right now, it is set at 32mb. This is usually enough for searches, but when a search has a very common word, it is not enough and the script will cause an error.

vBulletin has a default list of words to ignore that can be overridden.

But, I could be wrong.

markjenn

Bingo. It's fine if for performance reasons or resource reasons to limit the terms in the search. But it's not Okay to simply dump the user onto a blank screen without telling them the problem. Something is screwed up in the config - I've used this forum software before on other sites and when a too-common term is used, it quickly comes back with a message saying that some of the terms in the search are too common. I think it is as simple as the admin specifying the message you want to come up after a timeout or resource-allocation-problem search - I think the config right now is that this message is blank, so guess what? You get a blank screen. But I've never set up a vbulletin board before so perhaps I'm all wet.

Another big annoyance is that any search, even a completely unsuccessful one, starts the 30-second timer. So in your trial-and-error attempts to get a successful search, you're only allowed to try every 30 seconds. Other sites using this software will start the timer only after a successful search that returned useful results.

- Mark

SweetLou

That is why I mentioned the default ignore search word list. Certain words that cause the script to error would need to be added. Without these, the script will cause an error. Since php error reporting is turned off, you only get a blank page. If error reporting was on, the you would get a page saying what the error was.

markjenn

But that error message would be a cryptic programmer debugging error message anyway and would be of little or no use to the end user (and is a potential security breach), that's why this form of error reporting is turned off when the programmers throw the code over the wall and the BBS is deployed.

You'd never want to depend on always having any word that breaks the bank to be in the ignore list. This is way too sketchy as the index is constantly changing as material is added - a word that would be legal one day, would cause an error the next.

Almost all these systems have "hooks" to allow the admin to specify appropriate end-user error messages under conditions of insuffiicient resources and as I said before, on other boards with similar software, that's exactly what happens.

Search did a complete and total meltdown a month or so ago and I suspect this problem may still be an aftershock from this.

- Mark

Brian

The search function issues are actually related to indexing, and it should be resolved by tomorrow. They're starting the fix tonight, but it's going to run all night.

KevinSours

The problem is the memory limit as noted above. The solution is to switch to a new search altogether which requires us to fully reindex the board.
Kevin

Brian

^^ What he said.

SweetLou

I never said it didn't have to do with the indexing.

Actually the error message isn't that cryptic. But I do agree in not showing the error message for security reasons.
This is true, that is a problem with a huge forum. But for certain words, I would see no problem in the ignore list. Since once it is a problem, it won't get better in the future.
I would assume this can happen, I am just not sure how to implement it. Would a php die() command work? I have never ran into a memory allocation problem in any of my scripts. But since the complete html is written, I assume a custom die() function could work to produce a custom error message.

East Hill

See here:

https://www.bikeforums.net/news-announcements/379127-search-scheduled-fixed.html

East Hill

markjenn

I do a lot of PHP programming but I've never had to worry about a stressed production environment like a BBS. But a BBS is a major hunk of software so I'm sure the guys who wrote the BBS have. IOW, I don't think this is a programming issue, it's an admin config issue in the setup of the BBS.

It sounds like the guys here have a good handle on it and that's great - running one of these things is a lot of work.

- Mark

SweetLou

It could be both or just the one. Typically, this doesn't happen. It only happens with databases as big as this one. vBulletin and other forum software usually have different ways to handle this. I remember a couple of years ago, phpBB.com was having a very similar problem. One of the users of that software had a thread on how to compensate for such big databases and users. It had to do with what gets index and what doesn't, etc. Eventually, phpBB did change the way it searched the database. Both the table structure and options to use phpBB or MySQL search capabilities. I didn't really keep up with the changes, since it wasn't a big concern to me, but I do remember the authors talking about how they are changing it.

Oh, East Hill, my discussion here really has nothing to do with bikeforums.net. I am just rambling on about the issue. I am not trying to convince anyone what the problem is or how to fix it. This is more of an educational discussion. When I mentioned using a custom die() function. I really wasn't trying to say it should be done. I was more trying to figure if it could be done in an educational sense.

I hope I made myself clear and if I gave the impression that I was trying to tell the administrators of this board how to do their job, I am sorry. That was not my intention.

Cyclist0383

Urgh. I'm now getting an almost blank page save for 'Search results provided by: ibSearch from Internet Brands beta'

skiph

10:55PM PST.....

Searching for posts by me in the 50+ forum goes to the "beta" page with NO results....I guess I've vanished.

Jynx

yea i can no longersearch my own name to see what posts i have made

bnr40

I miss the search from last visit option.