Forum search permissions

[Joe]

Just wait patiently...

Sure. We'll wait and see. No problem.

[Checker]

BTW: At "Members" the pulldown "Username begins with:"does not work

[I am Baas]

Eh Checker, stalking TPFC members?

[Andrew Lee]

As of today, searches appear to be have been restricted exclusively to logged in visitors .

Temporary glitch or permanent policy change ?

Deliberate change. I implemented this patch recently because I found that the search function is putting a lot of strain on the database. Since implementing this change, the strain has largely been eliminated.

However, I am now trying a different approach by playing around with the "Guest search flood interval" value, so guest search is now back in action. Let's see how that goes...

Ditto with the active topics.

[Andrew Lee]

I apologise that this change has inconvenienced some of you, which I did not expect, since I am always logged in and seldom access TPFC as a guest.

Anyway, as I mentioned, this was done as a experiment to find out if guest search is the reason for the strain on the database. I analyzed the mysql slow log and had a hunch that that was the case, and indeed it was.

So now guest search has been restored (along with active topics). But I have made the following changes to the search settings to test out another approach to this problem:

User search flood interval: 1s (0)
Guest search flood interval: 5s (0)
Search page system load limit: 1 (0)

*Values in brackets are the old values.

Will continue monitoring the situation and keep you guys posted.

[Andrew Lee]

Sysadmin, could you kindly merge the two topics, and perhaps care to shed some light on this vexing subject, pretty please ?

Done.

BTW: At "Members" the pulldown "Username begins with:"does not work

Fixed. This does not appear to be related to the guest search issue, but with the previous version of phpBB. Anyway, I updated to the latest version and it is working again.

[__philippe]

@Andrew

Thanks for elucidating this mystifying "restricted guest search" enigma and mending the underlying DB overload problem.
(merging of relevant overlapping topics also appreciated..)

__philippe

[Craunch]

To put the new search flood interval in perspective, the ArchLinux website forum search uses a 60s flood interval. This is rather frustrating when your search doesn't find what you were looking for and need to try again.

A brief experiment I tried there suggests that 15s would not cause any significant delay in doing two searches because it is likely to take that long to realise that the initial search failed and to amend the search criteria. Similarly, more than 15s might be needed to reduce the searching load on the database

[Joe]

Oh well, so much for the bug theory . At least now we know what the problem was.

[I am Baas]

Oh well, so much for the bug theory .

Oh, you are not just the clueless type but an unscrupulous one too. The one that was pushing the "bug theory" is you Joe. Let me help you with a couple of quotes:

It's definitely a bug or a temporary setting

Anyway, do you really believe a bug would be intelligent enough to produce a nicely worded message like "Sorry but you are not permitted to use the search system"? Think again.

It's just an automatic forum message, it doesn't need to be intelligent.
I'm confident it's just a temporary permission issue.

I'd rather tend to suspect some kind of (temporary) experiment

Thoughts?

[Joe]

You're entitled to your opinion, I suppose, but so am I. This is the last I have to say on this thread.

[Checker]

Eh Checker, stalking TPFC members?

Yes

[Checker]

BTW: At "Members" the pulldown "Username begins with:"does not work

Fixed. This does not appear to be related to the guest search issue, but with the previous version of phpBB. Anyway, I updated to the latest version and it is working again.

Thanks

[Andrew Lee]

A brief experiment I tried there suggests that 15s would not cause any significant delay in doing two searches because it is likely to take that long to realise that the initial search failed and to amend the search criteria. Similarly, more than 15s might be needed to reduce the searching load on the database

Thanks for the suggestion. If 5s doesn't work, I will slowly increase it until the desired result is obtained i.e. minimum restriction to eliminate the strain.

[I am Baas]

This is the last I have to say on this thread.

Oh shite, Bəəs 2.0 needs an upgrade.