Bogus Thumbnails

[Q]

Can someone regenerate the thumbnails in bulk, or should we start a thread with the b0rked URLs?

[boddabing42]

I don't know if this is what you are talking about, but I (for 1) have been getting many wrong thumbnails in my posts. It used to occur about 1 time per 100 images but now seems to be about 1 in 25. I was deleting the image and reposting but now, I've decided, a better way is to leave the bad thumbs there so just perhaps someone will look at the software problem. Just my opinion

[butler bill]

That is leaving a lot of extra work for the Mods Preview the post before you Submit it, and if it is not correct fix it The bad thumbs seen to occur when 2 posts go in at the same time and the thumbs are interchanged. I don't know how that is possible but that is what seems to be happening. Probably one in 100 thumbs come up wrong, in my experience posting.

[Q]

That is leaving a lot of extra work for the Mods Preview the post before you Submit it, and if it is not correct fix it The bad thumbs seen to occur when 2 posts go in at the same time and the thumbs are interchanged. I don't know how that is possible but that is what seems to be happening. Probably one in 100 thumbs come up wrong, in my experience posting.

I'm sorry, but posting is troublesome enough, now posters have to muck arround just to get the posts to work right??? nowonder folks want to use other image services and posting the links to them here!

If the root cause is not found I believe it's better if someone write a little script to redo all the thumbnails automatically. Place it in a cron and have it run every week or so...

Placing the burden on the posters is equally problematic as having the mods redo them.

check out this thread http://board.celebsdb.com/thread11338.html

[Q]

Preview the post before you Submit it, and if it is not correct fix it

Actually, I did not beleive the problem when creating a post, but on exiting posts, eventually the relation between the thumb and the source gets changed.

Those that I find b0rk3d, are not posts of myown, so I can not fix them...

[Horsty]

Is it really such a big problem?
I also have the experience that every 100 thumbs there occurs a wrong one. Then I edit my post and write down that it is a wrong one and descibe the photo as good as I can...

And often I saw already that mods were able to fix wrong thumbs...

[lineback]

I have to disagree on several points, Q. I really consider the posting process to be easy and I'm averaging nine posts a day since mid-April. An extra 30 seconds to hit Preview, check the thumbs and hit Submit doesn't add a lot of effort. The mods stay very busy cleaning up dead links, duplicates and rules violations so it's not fair to expect them to add this task - the board will suffer. If someone like Horsty on a flaky dialup in Greece can post as much as he does, it can't be too onerous. As I write this I'm posting an 86MB video of Milena Velba and when I see the text in the Firefox tab change from Loading to Post a reply I go to that tab and add another attachment. If I find someone is chasing my posts, downloading them as fast as they are posted, I open another tab of the thread and stage the next post. Second, this is an annoyance and not a frequent or major problem - it's only happened to me a few times but then I post mostly picture sets that only have one preview pic, or videos with no previews. Lately I've posted more 4-pic posts and haven't had it happen once. You seem to work in or around the software business so you must know how the bug fix process works. I would guess this bug has been reported to the phpBB folks but if they're in the middle of a major build of a new release, this would be way down the list. They are working on showstoppers and this doesn't qualify. Your idea to write a script and put it in a cron is the best temporary fix - write Mike and offer to do it. That would be a great help. Crons are great to run cleanup scripts so this would be a logical workaround and we know workarounds are always necessary in the world of software bugs. As an admin working with developers, I was just happy to get a workaround for a problem and usually the endusers were too. To the best of my knowledge this board is hosted by an ISP running Red Hat Linux so a cron is no problem. I've almost finished posting the video in the time it took me to hunt-and-peck type this reply.

[boddabing42]

Previewing is painless??? If you were a 56k user like me who really gets about 25k speed and were posting mostly 100k+ sized attachments, which I normally collect and try to share here, I'm not sure you would see it the same way. Previewing the attachment is easy enough, but deleting and resubmitting takes me a lot of time! I believe the problem is not mine (as I made a correct post) and I will not waste my time checking if the thumbnails are correct. If this is unacceptable, PM me with another suggestion. I just think the BBS software owners should be the one to deal with the problem - Not the Mods or the posters.

[Q]

Yes, there is a glitch that now and then exchanges a thumbnail with another.

agreed

Now as bill said, the simple thing to do is preview the pic before submitting.

With my limited number of posts, I've never seen this happen on one of my posts.

I've managed to post over 17,000 pics and have not found it to difficult.

So personally you've encountered this problem only when posting. I've seen thumbs that were ok one day, then a few days later they were b0rk3d. I failed to take note at the time if they were edited posts or not.

It doesn't take any more time or effort.

Unfortunately It does take time and effort.

I believe the worst l post I've had took nearly 9 minutes to complete (4 files)... the process to post is painful... hence my desire for an automated uploader.

When you see that your thumb or thumbs are intact, hit the "submit" button. Voilla!

This becomes problematic if someone [me] was working on writing an automated uploader.

I too would hope that the problem could be fixed, but that's out of my arena.

Who can work on this? I'd volunteer, but I doubt someone is going to fork over shell access (ssh) to an anonymous joe (aka, me). if you can't find someone you trust to poke at things, there are other choices.

Dump the database to a file, change all the e-mail addy's/passwords, tar up the all the site's files and configurations. remember no compression.

It's likely to be a few gigs, so send it via snail mail on dvd(s), or just suck it up and allow whomever you ahve looking at it to download it from a url on the site somewhere.

Regardless, I have found the above fix to be painless. I and other's have voiced this simple procedure in the past, so I'm not much inclined as much as I use to be to clean up stuff that the original poster could have easily fixed himself.

I was not aware of the procedure. this whole thread was ignored for nearly a month. I looked again tonight and must have missed it.

If someone with access wrote a small perl script to re-build the thumbnails and then stuffs it into the crontab (er, assuming *inx) the problem would be fixed nightly.

If you want to be fancy, the script author could write some logs detailing what was changed. This log could be corelated with the server access logs to give some insite as to where and when the problem is happening.

Now when I come upon a erroneous thumbnail that could have been edited and fixed by the poster, most the time I just delete it.

Why delete them? Is it becuase it's easier?

[lineback]

Q - I haven't experienced thumbs getting corrupted after being posted and I revisit a lot of threads constantly to post and be sure I'm not posting duplicates but I'm not saying it doesn't happen. My years in the business say every kind of software glitch happpens now and then. You haven't said what OS you're running and if you're on a dialup - I'm assuming you are. As far as fixing the problem obviously the admins are not going to give you root access so I'd PM Mike and ask I you could help and check the phpBB site for an SDK to develop what's needed - I imagine that's available. I agree the effort to write the script should include logging although logging the corrections made doesn't seem to lead to the cause of the problem. I think that could only come from programmers viewing transaction logging in the database although from my experience with Oracle and Sybase that is a difficult task.

[lineback]

Boddabing42 - As I said, all props to y'all who mange to post so much in spite of a slow connection. My hat is definately off to you. You put in ten times the work per post as me so thanks for fighting to participate so much!

[Q]

I have to disagree on several points, Q.

life would be rather boring if everyone agreed with one and other =)

I really consider the posting process to be easy and I'm averaging nine posts a day since mid-April.

I'm going to guess the 9 posts take you between 30 minutes and one hour.

All that for 36 pictures?

An extra 30 seconds to hit Preview, check the thumbs and hit Submit doesn't add a lot of effort.

I guess I just have bad luck all the time and manage to use the server when it's piggedout!

I use preveiw all the time btw... mostly becuase I touch type and often mispell or accidently touch my laptop's touchpad and delete half a paragraph...

The mods stay very busy cleaning up dead links, duplicates and rules violations so it's not fair to expect them to add this task - the board will suffer.

couple things...

1. I'm gratefull for the community here.

2. I'm gratefull to the admins for being decent folks and putting up with our crap. =)

3. I believe a 100 line script would bandaid the thumbnail problem... admins and users alike will not have to do anything.

4. I believe external links on the site should be banned (only after the number of files per post is increased to 100, and an automated upload script is available)

5. pure duplicates can found with checksums ( again a script can take care of this )... the problem with two of the same pic but different resolutions will need a human touch or someone good with image processing algs...

If someone like Horsty on a flaky dialup in Greece can post as much as he does, it can't be too onerous.

I truely wonder at times why my uploads take so long. I have broadband so perhaps my route has some issues... dunno, but It's anoying and very real...

As I write this I'm posting an 86MB video of Milena Velba and when I see the text in the Firefox tab change from Loading to Post a reply I go to that tab and add another attachment.

so you have to make 6 seperate posts of four files each 4 megs. Thats after you split the file, and click browse, click add attachment...

Actually i believe i read somewhere this was lifted to 5 meg...

If I find someone is chasing my posts, downloading them as fast as they are posted, I open another tab of the thread and stage the next post.

ah, you're a nice guy to do that. thanks.. =)

Second, this is an annoyance and not a frequent or major problem - it's only happened to me a few times...

agreed, it's just anoying.. I bet folks still click on the pic knowing that the one that's not like the others is a boo-boo.

...but then I post mostly picture sets that only have one preview pic, or videos with no previews.

I'm not a great fan of ZIP/RAR/TAR...

Lately I've posted more 4-pic posts and haven't had it happen once.

See that's the thing that gets me... It's not consistant and I'm going to wild guess it's a sign of a bigger problem.. is it load related? concurrency? is this site behind an loadbalancer that's causing problems?

It's going to be tough to find I suspect.. but a small script to stop gap the problem, prevent admins from sacking posts with bogus thumbnails... if the author writes the script to also include logs, a postmortem can be done by corelating it to the access logs.

I'm not trying to add to someone's plate, Just presenting a stop gap that would be easy to implement and I'm offering to help (as you write about bellow).

You seem to work in or around the software business so you must know how the bug fix process works. I would guess this bug has been reported to the phpBB folks but if they're in the middle of a major build of a new release, this would be way down the list.

actually, I believe the problem is in the attach_mod which is not included in phpbb.

Your idea to write a script and put it in a cron is the best temporary fix - write Mike and offer to do it.

I will do that... (on pile of todo's)

I've almost finished posting the video in the time it took me to hunt-and-peck type this reply.

I sware a simple upload of 4 800k files typically takes 5+ minutes... maybe it's because I use firefox on OSX.. who knows..

[lineback]

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you aren't being disrepectful in your answers, even though some sound that way. I've always given you respect in my disagreement. The nine post average is generally made up of picture sets or video and represents much more than 36 pictures - that was mildly insulting. A checksum script as I understand it will only give you files with the same size - mods frequently delete dups which contain the same image but a different logo which results in a different file size. Duplicates where another pic of greater resolution is posted are considered upgrades and allowed. I made my living for many years using tar many times a day and never liked it but it was the only tool we had so I dealt with it. WinZip and WinRAR are very more capable and no problem for me. Concurrency is always a problem with a site like this but I don't think they do load balancing. They seem to be a pretty clean ISP with multiple T1s with no bandwidth limiting algorithms. I don't know this for a fact - this is what I believe based on observation. Once again Mike would be the person to answer these questions. I'm not getting on your case - as I've said before if your knowledge can help thiis board, I'm certainly behind it.

[gryphondo]

Gee......where do I begin? I do sense a bit of disrespectful tone in this discussion, but not enough to cut anyone off at the knees as of yet. Having said that, let me address a few points without writing a War and Peace length tome.

For those who don't wish to waste their time checking their own posts, don't expect me to waste my time cleaning it up for you. If any of you cleaned up as much crap as I do, you would understand that. Yes, by the way, it is easier to delete an erroneous thumbnail that someone didn't take the time to edit themselves. I spend quite a bit of time babysitting as it is.

It's funny that as much as I've posted on this board, I'm not having the challenges of other's that I hear complaining. Now I'm not saying your beefs aren't valid, just that I seem to post a fair amount of material and my thumbnails seem to work, and none of them morf into a different one once they're in place. My simple fix is one that has worked perfectly for me, and I merely offered it up as a suggestion, as I've done before in another topic.

I would also say, that even though I appreciate all the fine posting that goes on around here by some members, if it's too much of a pain or chore to do so, then don't.

There are a few glitches that this board experiences, and I have voiced my disdain of such on more than one occasion. As I said before, the fixes are out of my arena. For those of you with the fixes and know how, I encourage you to pm the admin and voice your concerns.

[lineback]

That sums it up very well, gryphondo and I'll own up to having written War and Peace-length messages several times!