Question A thread deleted when deleting a new post. Bug?

As reported in another thread it happend again. A thread is gone. In the former case it was after deleting one post from a thread. In this case it was after a normal posting.

In the first case i'm not sure what happend after submitting the delete but I think I got back to the Forum. In this case I got a gray page but with the site header showing. I had manually to go back to the Forum. This worked imediatly so the connection should not have bin broken. A server timeout probably not. The thread was gone. As I in this case know the thread I had a look in the db table and found the thread with 4 entries. My new posting is not there. But the thread is not showing up in the Forum and then of course not the 4 postings. So the thread must be blocked somehow. I found the tip about the hold field and checked this. I was now informed that this is not used for blocking the thread/posting but as I understand another word for the J! standard published. J! standard also have two other fields to block a table entry during update. I couldn't find something like it.

The similarity I see is that in both cases I posted to the same thread twice within a short time (30 minutes or so) without any new posting from someone else in between and this very seldom happens. It could be 3 Months ago.

We do not have any problems with the server. A year ago we moved to a new provider partly because of this reason It is really fast and in our case handles more heavy jobs than a small post to the Kunena forum. e.g. submitions including update of db tables and at the same time uploading 5 large images.

Versions
Joomla 1.5.19
I do not have the exact version numbers of the system but they are for sure "modern" Nothing with old 4.something

over

Thank you, over, for getting back to us on this problem of yours.

In summary, you are using K 1.5.11. You have deleted one posting but, for some reason, the entire thread (in which that post was made) is now no longer visible on your website.

Was it possible, perhaps, that the post you deleted was the first posting made in that thread?

If I am right, it may be that the other messages that belonged to the thread have been "orphaned", that is, there is no topic (which is "created" by the first post in a thread) to which they can be assigned. In order to fix this, you will need to look into your database to see what the topic-id is for the remnant posts (the thread that's now "invisible") and see if such a topic-id exists.

It's complicated to explain. Perhaps another technical person can explain it better.

We strongly advice our users to only use the Delete facility in extenuating circumstances. Perhaps we should issue the advice: do not delete the first message in a thread - it can possibly disrupt the integrity of the thread structure if there are other threads in the topic. This problem may have been alluded to, in a roundabout fashion, in User access to delete own post.

K 1.6 has much better deletion features: messages are not immediately removed from the database ... they are only hidden from view.

Let's hear some other ideas on how to help with this problem.

Ohhhh Mann as a German would say. :silly: I'm not a German

Please give it to someone with some technical knowledge.
It's all explaind in this thread. You should have a look why and how a forum path disappears. Maybe a person with technical knowledge knows whats going on. Would be nice to know.If a connection is broken or the server has somekind of problem, the last post may be lost of course but the remaining shouldn't disappear from the forum.

I've already explaind the deletion of the first/last including a scrren dump. My sugestion was to change the information text to not be that confusing about first and last posting

For my urgent problem I've now myself found a work around to activate the latest disapperad thread. Came of the idea to have a look in "My recent discussions" and hop there I found it. Then submitted a dummy posting. Voila the thread is now shown in the forum again. I lost my last posting but the othere ones are there.

over

I spent over two hours yesterday, looking into this issue. I have to admit, because the topic was 3 months old, I didn't look closely enough at every message in this discussion and, especially, I overlooked the image shown earlier (reproduced below) and the area highlighted near the bottom:

So I confess my guilt in this and now realise that the time I spent yesterday could have been avoided if I'd looked closer at what had been posted before. :blush: Yes, I proved yesterday, for both K 1.5 and K 1.6), that if you delete the first post in a thread - and I mean really delete it ... from the database - then you will make orphans of all the replies to that message. In other words, you will destroy the thread structure and you will not be able to view the topic again.

So, let's review this discussion:

over wrote:

I deleted my own post, just used to inform users about a moved thread via the mail. Then the whole thread was gone!

over wrote:

I guess this is a major bug.

The user reporting this "bug" suggested that this situation might have something to do with the deleting the last message posted to a thread.

This is a summary of the situation. If I have misinterpreted the situation then please correct me.

I'm sorry, but we have not been able to confirm that deleting the most recently posted message to a thread results in the destruction of the thread structure. We can confirm that deleting the first/oldest message will destroy a thread's structure and, for that purpose, there is a warning given during of the delete process (as clearly shown in the above image). As part of my testing yesterday, I deleted a few latest posts, too, but I could not reproduce the "bug" that has been suggested.

over wrote:

You should have a look why and how a [thread] disappears.

I know one cause for a thread's disappearance. It's because the first post - the oldest post - in a thread actually defines the structural integrity of the whole thread; the first post is the thread's "parent". If you delete this database record, you destroy the structural integrity of the forum thread even though the records of the other messages are still in the database; the "child" records become orphans. To fix the problem you need to modify the second record in the thread to make it the "parent".

I still don't understand the possibility suggested in this thread, that somehow the deletion of the last post to a thread can create data loss. That remains a total mystery to me. :dry:

I would be interested to see the detailed steps involved in your workaround, please.

hi sozzled,

Lets keep the two cases somewhat apart even if thea are similar.

1. Three months ago I deleted the upper post as in the screen dump shown. This is the last post and not the first because I sort them not to have to scroll down and/or page through to read the lastest. (a Kunena setting) ASfter the deletion the thread was gone. As I didn't know/remeber the subjectand or from where to where I had moved it shortly before. I couldn't have a look in the db to find out if some data was remaining. I had another try today by comparing "My Discussions" with a couple of foren. But it is hard to compare 3 months and x weeks To find the date in the db is also not easy because of the for humans hard to understand php timestamps. As you say there could be some orphans left in the database. Or somehow blocked als in case 2?.If you have an idea I would give it a try. Maybee I'll come up with an idea how to use a sql query to find out.

2. Yesterday another thread disappered after a new posting. As I wrote, I for some reason got a gray screen but with the site header above. As I never got a server time out I'm not sure but I think then you don't see anything. Just a blank screen. As I immedeatly could go back to the site probably also mo connection problem. Well I lost my post and have to live with this. Was able to post it again today after my fix. It worked perfactly. My urgent problem was that the thread was gone from the forum. As I in this case knew what the subject was, I had a look in the db tables and found the old posts still there. I later got the idea to have a look in "My latest discussions" I had made another post to the same thread shortly before. And there it was. Explainable because the query probbably looks for my postings and doesn't care about the thread. Then I tried to open the thread. This worked as well. Wrote a "dummy" text and submitted it. Had a look in the forum view and there the thread now appeared.

Conclusion: 3 problems: - Can a deletion of the upper/last post make the thread to disappeare? (still in the db?) - How to reactivate a disapeared (blocked) thread ?(my Fix?) - Had the "gray screen" something to do with a Kunena bug? I guess the last is hard to know, I suppose also the web can loose some data over a distance without any complete breakdown.

over