Unable to start new threads on MFD

Are you still getting it now? I've increased the memory allocation again

bugger

if you get it again, can you post the error message again, so I can check if the memory has increased

Looks like the memory increase didn't work
I'll try again later

cheers Amit

Happened to me too!

I've been unable to post the SotD thread. This message has been showing up on my last 4 attempts (4 days)

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 1048553 bytes) in /home/basenot2/public_html/community/includes/functions_search.php on line 329

I got it tonight while also trying to start the SotD thread. I ended up starting a thread with 'SotD' as the title and 'what' as the message. The system accepted this short thread. I edited it and added my SotD without any more problems. A two-step workaround.

I think it is as a result of the SOTD threads being quite large and having pics... do people experience similar messages when posting to the threads like 'guess the fragrance by the picture'?

Unable to read what I have posted about three hours ago on our SotD thread, there were more responses between mine and Quarry's.

The fact that there are pictures in the SotD thread shouldn't be creating a storage issue on your server, Grant, since the vast majority of those pictures are only stored on your server as URLs anyway. Or am I missing something?

What is being done on Line 329 of functions_search.php? There is obviously a memory allocation going on there which is failing. It might be trying to create a list of items which is too long. Might it be related to the fact that there are probably more threads started with the character string "SotD" than any other? Just shooting in the dark here ...

Unable to view all new threads or posts on all forums all after yesterday's about 3 pm, can't read what does not show on the new main community page, i.e. I can click on the one that has the latest response and it brings me to that thread only.

Can't view or read my PMs although it shows I got 2 new messages, I click on Your Notifications, then Unread Private Messages and nothing new appears.

Twolf, I hope someone can suggest what might be going wrong for you. I wonder if you would have the same thing happen if you tried a different browser, just to see. You could download one like Google Chrome and use that for a bit and see if you still have trouble viewing threads on basenotes...? (Last week, I had to switch to Google Chrome on my laptop after Firefox kept crashing, but that's a separate issue.)

Asta may be on to something here.

It was worse with tonight's thread. I could not even use 'SotD' in the title. The thread was finally accepted when I submitted it with a title of 'Thursday, 19 Feb 09' and 'meh' as the body of the post. I was then able to edit my post without problem - adding 'SotD' to the title and changing the body.

OK, here's what I think is going on under the hood. Hopefully Grant will be able to confirm whether this is right or not ...

The initial step in storing the new thread on the server is probably using a hash function to determine a single integer which becomes an index into an array of thread storage linked lists. Unfortunately, the hash function is probably a weak function which only depends upon the first few characters in the title of the thread. The SotD threads typically start with "SotD" and then the day of the week, with very little variation. This has probably been going on for years now. With only 7 different days in the week, the linked lists corresponding to those 7 corresponding values of the array index are storing many more threads than the other indexed array locations. So the memory limitation does not result from the global memory allocation (which Grant keeps increasing), but on the ability of the server to load the linked lists of threads into RAM from the database. Those 7 lists are so huge, it is probably taxing the server's virtual memory too much.

TwoRoads may have been able to fool the server into placing the SotD thread into an atypical linked list by avoiding the character string "SotD", and his subsequent editing of the title apparently did not move the thread out of that list into its "normal" location. Another thing that might have worked would be putting a random character string prefix at the beginning of the title, and then editing it away.

There are other variations on this theme, such as storage in an unbalanced binary tree which keys on initial letters of the title. The high prevalence of "SotD" in the titles would then create a huge depth to such a tree. It's also possible that the data structures storing the keywords for Search are being taxed by the huge number of threads which have "SotD" and the days of the week in the title. There are lots of possibilities here, all of them resulting from some sort of non-randomizing key generation algorithm.

Having said all this, it's still a weird problem since the main method by which the server accesses the threads is through a numerical thread ID, which you can see in your browser's URL as you read this (223206). My suspicion at this point is that it probably has something to do with the functions which facilitate Search, since TwoRoads implied he couldn't have the string "SotD" anywhere in the initial title.

Grant, what is being done on Line 329 of functions_search.php?

Thank you tang! I am good, up and running.

The SotD thread is getting increasingly harder to start. Tonight, I received the fatal error message when I tried to preview the post. Previously, the error occured later when I tried to submit the thread.

Same problem here. I was not able to preview the first post. And then the complete post disappeared after the error message


Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 524265 bytes) in /home/basenot2/public_html/community/includes/functions_search.php on line 329

Tried opening the SotD thread today and got this error message


Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 262098 bytes) in /home/basenot2/public_html/community/includes/functions_search.php on line 329

This is not the first time, that I have seen this. Earlier I thought it must be my computer but then I saw this thread.

I tried starting the SotD thread in the Female Fragrance Discussion forum tonight, and received the usual error. I then started a thread with a title not containing the character string "SotD", and it started fine. Then I changed the title to the usual SotD title, and it also worked fine.

I found out something else too. If you attempt to use the Advanced Search mechanism to search for threads containing the character string "SotD" in the title, it doesn't just truncate the long list of such threads. It actually errors out. I wouldn't be surprised if starting a thread does a preliminary search of the database for threads with similar strings in the title (for whatever reason), and this is what is crashing out the starting of the SotD thread. The code is probably trying to temporarily keep pointers to all the SotD threads in memory, which exceeds its allotment. Keep in mind that the line of code that is crashing when people attempt to start the SotD thread is within the file functions_search.php.

Bumping this thread to see if there has been any progress made on resolving the issue ...

I have been getting this error message a lot lately when trying to start threads (not SOTD) on the Male Forum. I had to resort to the TwoRoads "two-step" workaround.