Woke up this morning, Vanilla asking me to install

lech

circuit, OK that's fine. Until you can do that I'm not sure we'll be able to easily narrow down whether this is a Vanilla issue or an add-on issue. But once you can and if this doesn't occur under Vanilla in a plain format, then we can safely focus on whether or not one of the extensions are tossing the monkey wrench. After all of that we'll be able to better figure out how to prevent it from happening in the future.

circuit

okay, first impressions say the problem is with Discussion View Counter. i'm still testing.

circuit

ok, it's discussion view count (v1.2) that is causing the error... so this suggests it is also causing the deletion of the file.

i must admit i have not updated to the newest version (1.2.1), as reports on the thread suggest that it isn't particularly stable and can delete existing view counts. perhaps this is why i'm getting the error, and a newer version fixes it.

well, at least we know where to look now.

lech

Cool. Keep an eye on it though. While it's good that you're upgrading all necessary add-ons don't be surprised if you find this error continuing to reoccur. In which case I suggest you then disable all add-ons like mentioned before.

circuit

ok, no problem. all extensions are still enabled for now - i have a copy of settings.php waiting whenever it goes down, and i don't expect uptime will be as important this week as it's a holiday period. i would be willing to experiment with the extension if anyone does look at it (my skills do not stretch that far!). i'm still reluctant to upgrade to 1.2.1 as the support for the extension seems to be lacking.

if 1.2.1 does fix the problem, i will do a full database backup and then try an upgrade. but as this issue wasn't mentioned in the blurb, i don't think it will change anything. i may be wrong of course.

if it starts happening again next week (when the site gets busier again) i'll turn off the view counts and see how we get on.

i should also add that i'm thinking of moving away from dreamhost just because their servers are noticeably slower than my previous host, and that's either causing the problem or aggravating it. or maybe the problem with the plugin is what is slowing the site down. either way, something's not working as well as it did before.

WallPhone

I looked at version 1.2.1, and it appears it also could cause this problem.

The extension has an installation routine in DiscussionCounters/conf/settings.php that runs if it doesn't find its version number entry in Vanilla's configuration. Problem is it has an else at the bottom that re-writes the version number to the configuration, even if its already there. (increasing the odds that Vanilla will blank the settings file and another process attempt to read it before getting a chance to save the configuration.)

Remove the red code and you should be good to go: (of course, there still could be another misbehaving extension somewhere o_0 )

if (!array_key_exists('EXTENSION_VIEW_DISCUSSION_VERSION', $Configuration)) 
{
   // lots of install code was here
}
else
{
	AddConfigurationSetting($Context, 'EXTENSION_VIEW_DISCUSSION_VERSION', '1.2');
}?>

EDIT: Just realized you can verify if this is the cause by noting if the 'last modified' date stamp of the settings file stops changing to the last time someone visited.

circuit

just an update to say that this works. thank you wallphone. i would recommend that the plugin is changed to avoid this happening to other people, as it seems to be common, having searched the forum. the site is running marginally faster (as fast as dreamhost allows!) and does not hang as it used to.

Stash

Looks like Mark has changed the core to prevent this from happening in the future

circuit

hooray! glad it was useful. thanks again to everyone took time out to assist!!

Stash

Strangely enough, I had a 0kb settings.php yesterday morning again, even with what I believed to be fixes to some extensions that caused constant setting writing... can't wait for the new release of Vanilla with the fix

Minisweeper

You should just be able to grab the fixed core files from the SVN...though I'm not sure which ones they are. Perhaps just grab the whole library folder?