Question K 3.0.4: You do not have permissions to access this page for ALL topics

It may have something to do with how to topics and categories were imported.

Here's how I did this.
1. Original forum is in Simple Machines
2. I setup a Joomla 1.5 install with Kuenena
3. Ran import from Simple Machines to phpBB
4. Ran import from phpBB to Kuenena
5. Migrated Joomla 1.5 site to Joomla 2.5
6. Installed Kuenena
7. Migrated to Joomla 3

And that's where we are at now. Can that process have anything to do with it? Maybe I should start over now that the system is all on MySQL 5.5?

There may be an easier solution. The key point you've made is that, even though you cannot see the messages posted in "all" topics, the restriction applies only to some, but not all, categories.

My suggestion is to change the category permissions for those categories where you cannot view posts as shown in red below:

1. Access Control Type = User Groups
2. Primary User Group = Public
3. Primary Includes Child Groups = Yes
4. Secondary User Group = Manager
5. Secondary Includes Child Groups = Yes

Try that and see if it makes a difference.

No difference.

The only ones that work is when the secondary group is blank, but I can't select blank manually. I have to choose one. Any ideas how to "unselect" the secondary group?

The key point you've made is that, even though you cannot see the messages posted in "all" topics, the restriction applies only to some, but not all, categories.

Unfortunately, the problem is more complicated. You can see the topics and posts in all categories. But only if the topic is older than nine months and one week. You cannot see newer topics.

Any ideas how to "unselect" the secondary group?

Select the same value as Primary User Group. It should work.

PS:
Go to "Extensions > Extensions Manager > (Tab) Database" and check whether your database is up to date.

hm.. maybe it helps if you count your statistics (Backend > Kunena > Forum Tools > Recount Statistics).

Tried both of the above. Same result. I'm really starting to think that it's a hangover from the SMF migration that somewhere along the way things got messed up. I'm going to try the process again and see if the results change. Unless you guys have any more ideas?

As the saying goes, "time is money" ... and we've all invested a lot of time on this problem without seeing any return on the investment.

My guess is that the problem started when J! 1.5 became involved (because J! 1.5 does not know anything about ACLs) and that the issue was compounded because you migrated from there on a platform that used MySQL that was incapable of properly supporting J! 3.2 when you eventually reached that stage. My suspicion is that the database tables have some data anomaly in them.

When you outlined your site's evolution, you mentioned J! 1.5, SMF, and Kunena but you do not give details of specific version numbers. You also did not give much detail about how you "imported" SMF data into Kunena and, in particular, why did you need J! 1.5 in the first place. What import tool did you use to convert the data from SMF to Kunena?

In the couple of cases where I've migrated from J! 1.5 to J! 3.2 I can say that I, too, have had some issues with ACL-related matters and they took me about an hour or so of tweaking a couple of things in the database. It all depends on (a) your skill, (b) how important the data is to you, and (c) how much time you have. Getting back to what I wrote at the beginning of this reply to you: time is money.

Good luck. I'd like to hear how you get along.