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Forum stats not showing on the dashboard
peterlu
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Suddenly the stats stopped to show up from Aug 07. Our site is running https. Nothing has been changed on that day. Any idea why it suddenly stopped? Where can I debug? Server error log shows nothing. I am running Vanilla v3.3
I found this post, but it does not help with my issue.
https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/36550/forum-stats-not-showing-on-the-dashboard
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Check the date range. The stats only display for 12 months only.
Did you figure this out @peterlu ? I noticed the exact same thing seems to have happened with my 3.3 forum, but at another date. No stats show up after August 24th. I am also a bit unsure where to start debugging this.
After digging deeper into this issue, I found that the statistics server itself was missing data after august 24th. The analytics requests the forum was sending was giving the error message 'Data too long for column 'LastIP' at row 1|Gdn_Database|Query|insert into GDN_RemoteSite'. Some more digging reveals that LastIP is not something sent along with the outgoing request, so I assume this is generated on the analytic server side (which makes sense).
This lead me to examine my network configuration closer, and I realized that I had IPv6 enabled on the server. And even though the forum is currently served over IPv4 only (and the hostname only resolves to a v4 address), apparently this background transmission to the analytics server happened over IPv6. And that seems to much for it to handle apparently.
I was in a position where disabling IPv6 wasn't a problem, and immediately upon disabling it, the statistics server started giving me status 200 instead of 500 on the requests. I also noticed that a bunch of data immediately populated in the graphs, although I am still missing some recent data, so I'll just keep an eye on it for now. The graph seems to be slowly populating. First up to september 8th, and a few minutes later to september 25th, so I guess the rest is forthcoming.
Of course, having to disable IPv6 is a poor workaround for many, since many servers rely on it, but I guess there might be a way to force PHP to stick to v4 one way or another. And I have no idea why it stopped working on the day it did. I've had IPv6 enabled on this server for many months, and checking my update history, there were no updates on or around that time period either. Did the analytic server DNS got updated to inlcude an IPv6 address for the domain name around this time? The time differences between me and @peterlu seems to be a bit long for DNS caching, but perhaps...
So, do I have to tell my hosting provider to disable the IPv6? 😮
Thank you very much.
That would be my recommendation to attempt, yes. Keep in mind that I have only tested this on one installation, my own, but it is quite clear from my testing that turning off IPv6 was the thing that fixed it for me but I never like to call something a definitive solution until it has been tested a bit more on different installations.
Before turning off IPv6, do make sure you don't need it for anything else though. Turning off an entire network protocol is a bit of a heavy-handed approach, but if you are not using it for anything, it is also a rather easy thing to do.
If you have shell access to the server, or a control panel that lets you control network settings, you may wish to do this yourself rather than asking your provider, but you should do it the way you are most comfortable with.
I filed a support ticket on your behalf. I'm familiar with the technical underpinnings so I attempted to speed things along with information (read: I guessed at the cause) if they choose to pursue it. I will update here if anything comes of it.
Thanks Linc, good to know the right people have been notified. When searching for this problem I found several other forums out there with this problem, so a fix would be appreciated.
A fix has been pushed for this issue - it should be resolved now.
Please let me know if this is persisting for you so we can investigate further.
Thank you!
Thanks @Andrew .
I've re-enabled IPv6 support on my host and let it run for a few days, and I don't see any problems yet. Of course, I don't really have control of what PHP does in the background when transmitting these packets so I can't draw any conclusions, but I'll monitor the stats and get back to you if I see any indication of the problem coming back.
I'm working with Mohamad who posted https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/38892/re-register-api-credentials-not-working#latest and we are still seeing this issue in a production environment that has had stable analytics stats for well over a year now and our issue is not related to IPv6. Is there a specific release we need to pull that contains this push or are you referring to a separate codebase for this analytics fix?
I have a similar issue on a forum running the 3.3 codebase. Our statistics seem to have fallen off between September 24th - September 25th.
These have been running for quite a long time reliably with no major changes near the time of the issue.
Hey everyone,
Thanks for letting me know that this problem still seems to be occurring - I'll raise it with the team later this morning.
We are facing the same issue. Two questions.
Hi Vanilla team,
Sorry to nag, just curious if there is an update on this issue?
If not, are there any suggested work arounds that we can try to implement to restore the function of the statistics?
Hello Everyone!
@Andrew Just want to check if there are any updates regarding this issue.
Thank you!
New version released today, have you checked that?
Hey there,
I've flagged this issue to discuss again at a meeting tomorrow. I'll provide any updates that seems relevant.
I'm happy to push for these types of core fixes - working analytics is very important for any community - but to set an expectation, the developers have to prioritize the cloud-based product when distributing resources for these types of issues. I'll do what I can to keep momentum on it, but I can not promise an immediate turnaround.
Thanks for the reply.
To provide an update, previously stats data went missing for our installation on the 25th of September.
Since then it started working again, and the missing data populated, but it has since stopped working again as of October 21st.
Hey @jonbiloh ,
Can you tell me where your site is being hosted? I've asked our Operations team to check into this problem, and I believe we've found a potential cause based on the timeline here.
Feel free to message me directly if you'd rather not post your preferred host in public.
Thank you!
For anyone experiencing a flat analytics page, it should be resolved now (as of late last night).
If you're still experiencing this issue, don't hesitate to send me a message so I can check into it again.
Thank you!