Mention is not working anymore

Yolo

SKevo Just to clarify: only the post send delay is related to SMTP. The mention issue is very much likely related to a Flarum bug (or an extension), so not FreeFlarum

We have the same Problem. If it is NOT FreeFlarum - what else could it be? As now we can not use Flarum as we need 🙁

tom23

Yolo Just to clarify: only the post send delay is related to SMTP. The mention issue is very much likely related to a Flarum bug (or an extension), so not FreeFlarum

@SKevo we didn't have this problem before the server move and didn't change any of the settings or install or uninstall any other plugins

tom23

Same here!

luceos

If it would be core it would be visible on discuss. To know which extension it is we need to know what extensions are installed. The best would be to have that information from a few communities so that we can triangulate the cause easier.

Also understand , from where I stand, I have only seen reports of such issues on FF and only after the server migration. This does seem to imply the cause to lie there.

tom23

I think it is a problem with quotes, but not always. Would be great someone could tell more. As this we can not use Flarum as we need

SKevo

I apologize for blindly thinking that this is Flarum related. It likely is not, due to the fact that others are having this problem as well since the server move.

We do not have a way to reliably find out what causes this issue. I have tested it at one forum and my forum as well and couldn't reproduce (yet). It is very difficult to make any assumptions (which I shouldn't have made) because of how little information we have about this issue (e. g.: no logs, can't pinpoint the culprit, etc...)

tom23 I think it is a problem with quotes, but not always.

Nice catch. I have observed that too. I will test it with quotes today to see what I can find. I will then proceed to look at various other forums and their enabled extensions for some common pattern that could help us rule out either Flarum or FreeFlarum. I'll keep you updated in this thread

luceos

SKevo did you update to PHP 8.1? If so it might me an extension that causes deprecation warnings or isn't compatible.

tom23 it would help if we have steps to reproduce. If that's not possible but you can see the error happen, please open the browser console and check for errors there as well as on the network tab (the latest xhr request might have failed). Knowing where the issue is happening helps in tracing it further.

SKevo

luceos did you update to PHP 8.1? If so it might me an extension that causes deprecation warnings or isn't compatible.

Yes, we have, however I don't see any deprecation warnings. But, I have found this error while testing:

flarum.ERROR: Error: Call to a member function find() on null in /app/vendor/sycho/flarum-move-posts/src/Formatter/FormatPostMentions.php:25
Stack trace:
#0 /app/vendor/s9e/text-formatter/src/Utils.php(123): SychO\MovePosts\Formatter\FormatPostMentions->SychO\MovePosts\Formatter\{closure}()
#1 [internal function]: s9e\TextFormatter\Utils::s9e\TextFormatter\{closure}()
#2 /app/vendor/s9e/text-formatter/src/Utils.php(120): preg_replace_callback()
#3 /app/vendor/sycho/flarum-move-posts/src/Formatter/FormatPostMentions.php(33): s9e\TextFormatter\Utils::replaceAttributes()
#4 /app/vendor/flarum/core/src/Foundation/ContainerUtil.php(30): SychO\MovePosts\Formatter\FormatPostMentions->__invoke()
#5 /app/vendor/flarum/core/src/Formatter/Formatter.php(110): Flarum\Foundation\ContainerUtil::Flarum\Foundation\{closure}()
#6 /app/vendor/flarum/core/src/Post/CommentPost.php(172): Flarum\Formatter\Formatter->render()
#7 /app/vendor/flarum/core/src/Api/Serializer/BasicPostSerializer.php(63): Flarum\Post\CommentPost->formatContent()
#8 /app/vendor/flarum/core/src/Api/Serializer/PostSerializer.php(21): Flarum\Api\Serializer\BasicPostSerializer->getDefaultAttributes()
#9 /app/vendor/flarum/core/src/Api/Serializer/AbstractSerializer.php(88): Flarum\Api\Serializer\PostSerializer->getDefaultAttributes()
#10 /app/vendor/sycho/json-api/src/Resource.php(183): Flarum\Api\Serializer\AbstractSerializer->getAttributes()
#11 /app/vendor/sycho/json-api/src/Resource.php(81): Tobscure\JsonApi\Resource->getAttributes()
#12 /app/vendor/sycho/json-api/src/Document.php(194): Tobscure\JsonApi\Resource->toArray()
#13 [internal function]: Tobscure\JsonApi\Document->Tobscure\JsonApi\{closure}()
#14 /app/vendor/sycho/json-api/src/Document.php(193): array_map()
#15 /app/vendor/sycho/json-api/src/Document.php(232): Tobscure\JsonApi\Document->toArray()
#16 /app/vendor/flarum/core/src/Api/JsonApiResponse.php(27): Tobscure\JsonApi\Document->jsonSerialize()
#17 /app/vendor/flarum/core/src/Api/Controller/AbstractSerializeController.php(134): Flarum\Api\JsonApiResponse->__construct()
#18 /app/vendor/flarum/core/src/Http/RouteHandlerFactory.php(41): Flarum\Api\Controller\AbstractSerializeController->handle()
#19 /app/vendor/flarum/core/src/Http/Middleware/ExecuteRoute.php(27): Flarum\Http\RouteHandlerFactory->Flarum\Http\{closure}()
#20 /app/vendor/laminas/laminas-stratigility/src/Next.php(51): Flarum\Http\Middleware\ExecuteRoute->process()

However, even if I disable that extension (SychO/MovePosts), existing mentions do not format correctly. I suspected that the extension modified the mentions format when they were saved to the database, but that's not the case - the database post data of user who was mentioned is still there, so it should render correctly (checked in database against post that had the issue).

As for browser console, I see only the following error:

sw:57 Uncaught ReferenceError: fetchEvent is not defined
    at sw:57:18

Source:

That seems to be related to PWA, so I tried disabling that extension and clearing forum cache, as well as my service worker cache, which made the error disappear, but it didn't resolve the issue with mentions.

I was lucky to find a case where one post had bugged mentions, and there was an identical post below that had okay mentions (link). Looking back into database, I could compare the contents of these posts. Their data in the database was identical as well (which means that we could rule out database issue).

At this point, I have no idea what could be causing this. I couldn't reproduce this by myself, and it seems to be happening pretty much randomly. Every little detail that I have found led me to nothing. I don't know much about Flarum's inner workings and how mentions are handled, so I hope that someone else might notice something - until then, I will keep on searching with a hope for a solution

luceos

@SychO in that format post mentions wouldn't it make more sense to use the relation instead of the collection and it seems the collection isn't always instantiated?

Not saying this is the issue..

SychO

luceos (disclaimer: I don't fully know the context of this discussion or what's exactly going on)

We use the collection instead of the relation method (we do that in mentions extension as well) to avoid producing multiple queries every time, the relation is 100% preloaded, so it's always guaranteed to not be null.

Since however there is an error here about it being null, my best guess would be that there is a non Post resource using mentions but not having the mentionsPosts relation on the model, so the collection is always null.

@SKevo I would look at the relevant forum's fof-pages page instances and see if there is one with a post mention (I am not familiar with that extension, but if it is trying to render post mentions, it would probably fail and produce the error, unless there is a different extension that does something similar to fof-pages).

SKevo

I also thought that this could be related to rate limiting (when there are many mentions, the client fetches many users and might be getting rate-limited by FF), but that's not the case either. There are no browser logs indicating any 429, and turning off rate-limiting doesn't make a change either (plus, I think that Flarum has some measures to prevent this from happening, like fetching user data in bulk)

In fact, it might not be related to any extension other than mentions. Turning off all extensions and clearing cache (or rsyncing, which clears cache and migrates DB) doesn't make the issue disappear either. I don't want to jump into conclusions again, but I think that it is related either to core or to flarum/mentions (maybe PHP 8.1 changed something?).

Just to make this complete, I am going to leave output of PHP Flarum info of known forum that has this issue:

Flarum core 1.3.1
PHP version: 8.1.7
MySQL version: 10.8.3-MariaDB-1:10.8.3+maria~bionic # <--- probably not a database thing, but just a FYI, we updated that too

# Could be some missing/updated extension?
Loaded extensions: Core, date, libxml, openssl, pcre, zlib, filter, hash, json, pcntl, Reflection, SPL, session, standard, sodium, mysqlnd, PDO, xml, calendar, ctype, curl, dom, mbstring, FFI, fileinfo, ftp, gd, gettext, iconv, exif, mysqli, pdo_mysql, pdo_pgsql, pgsql, Phar, posix, readline, shmop, SimpleXML, sockets, sysvmsg, sysvsem, sysvshm, tokenizer, xmlreader, xmlwriter, xsl, zip, Zend OPcache

+-------------------------------+---------+--------+
| Flarum Extensions             |         |        |
+-------------------------------+---------+--------+
| ID                            | Version | Commit |
+-------------------------------+---------+--------+
| flarum-markdown               | v1.3.0  |        |
| fof-upload                    | 1.2.3   |        |
| flarum-sticky                 | v1.3.0  |        |
| flarum-tags                   | v1.3.0  |        |
| flarum-suspend                | v1.3.1  |        |
| xelson-chat                   | v1.1.5  |        |
| webbinaro-gpx-preview         | 1.0.0   |        |
| v17development-seo            | v1.8.0  |        |
| the-turk-stickiest            | 2.0.3   |        |
| the-turk-flamoji              | 1.0.4   |        |
| sycho-profile-cover           | v1.3.1  |        |
| rob006-lang-polish            | v0.5.24 |        |
| nearata-twofactor             | v2.0.1  |        |
| migratetoflarum-canonical     | 1.0.0   |        |
| kyrne-whisper                 | 0.1.4   |        |
| justoverclock-hashtag         | 1.0.1   |        |
| jslirola-login2seeplus        | v0.2    |        |
| ianm-syndication              | 1.2.0   |        |
| fof-user-directory            | 1.2.3   |        |
| fof-user-bio                  | 1.1.0   |        |
| fof-split                     | 1.0.1   |        |
| fof-socialprofile             | 1.1.4   |        |
| fof-sitemap                   | 1.0.3   |        |
| fof-secure-https              | 1.0.1   |        |
| fof-reactions                 | 1.1.0   |        |
| fof-profile-image-crop        | 1.0.1   |        |
| fof-polls                     | 1.1.0   |        |
| fof-pages                     | 1.0.4   |        |
| fof-nightmode                 | 1.3.2   |        |
| fof-moderator-notes           | 1.1.0   |        |
| fof-merge-discussions         | 1.3.0   |        |
| fof-formatting                | 1.0.2   |        |
| fof-discussion-thumbnail      | 1.1.0   |        |
| fof-default-user-preferences  | 1.0.0   |        |
| fof-default-group             | 1.1.0   |        |
| fof-best-answer               | 1.2.2   |        |
| flarum-subscriptions          | v1.3.1  |        |
| flarum-statistics             | v1.3.0  |        |
| flarum-pusher                 | v1.3.0  |        |
| flarum-mentions               | v1.3.1  |        |
| flarum-lock                   | v1.3.0  |        |
| flarum-lang-swedish           | 1.0.1   |        |
| flarum-lang-spanish           | 1.2.2   |        |
| flarum-lang-german            | 1.3.0   |        |
| flarum-lang-french            | v3.7.0  |        |
| flarum-lang-english           | v1.3.0  |        |
| flarum-lang-dutch             | v1.0    |        |
| flarum-flags                  | v1.3.0  |        |
| flarum-emoji                  | v1.3.0  |        |
| flarum-bbcode                 | v1.3.0  |        |
| datlechin-silent-edit         | v0.1.0  |        |
| datlechin-signup-button       | v0.1.0  |        |
| datlechin-scroll-buttons      | v1.0.0  |        |
| datlechin-keyboard-shortcuts  | v0.1.1  |        |
| clarkwinkelmann-bookmarks     | 1.0.0   |        |
| askvortsov-rich-text          | v2.1.7  |        |
| askvortsov-pwa                | v3.1.3  |        |
| askvortsov-moderator-warnings | v0.6.1  |        |
| askvortsov-categories         | v3.0.6  |        |
| acpl-mobile-tab               | 1.1.0   |        |
| sycho-move-posts              | v0.1.6  |        |
+-------------------------------+---------+--------+
Base URL: https://www.xxx.com
Installation path: /data/host/xxx/app
Queue driver: sync
Mail driver: smtp
Debug mode: off

luceos

SKevo what about timeouts, in case of nginx both nginx and fpm timeouts. And can you confirm apache/fpm error_reporting to be a production value?

SKevo

luceos what about timeouts, in case of nginx both nginx and fpm timeouts.

We have a script that automatically checks whether PHP-FPM times out, and restart it, if needed. As for Nginx, I can't be sure, but there have been no timeouts that I know of. I also checked browser console when refreshing the broken mentions, and all statuses are 200.

luceos And can you confirm apache/fpm error_reporting to be a production value?

Yes: error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_STRICT, should be correct. There are errors in PHP-FPM log, but none that could be somehow related to mentions. Same goes for Nginx.

Yolo

We have this now in nearly every post and do not know why this happens 🙁

tom23

mentioning or quoting is NOT working anymore . it is always shown [unknown] or [deleted] instead of the username in the post and does not link to it either

SychO

Can someone explicitly say what the problem is, I'm really confused.

luceos

SychO there seems to be some issues with mentions on freeflarum.

We, as core, would be able to be of more assistance with some error traces. Either from the browser console or from the ajax request. The server logs do not seem to give any indications.

tom23

SychO Can someone explicitly say what the problem is, I'm really confused.

Since the server move, mentions no longer work for us. In quotes or directly when replying to posts. Instead of the username it is shows [unknown] or [deleted].
The 'funny' thing is that no one knows what it is. This problem is also not constant but apparently random but all the time. At one post it works finde, the other not.. mostly not 🙁