Problems posting on forum

[wiak]

The one big question.

What forum is going to be kept up and running, year after year.
Whoever is supplying the forum, probably is the only one paying for it.
How long are they willing to do that?

That's a very relevant question, and of course that has crossed my mind too. My view has been that a forum really is a forum and files and help topics and so on, should only be stored there temporarily. In that view it is up to the project creators and ideas/howto contributors to keep track of what is useful and store that on github, a regularly updated Wiki, or wherever they store things in a more permanent form.

One of the weaknesses of Murga-forum, and therefore Puppy organisation more generally, is that the Forum has become the main resource such that if it vanished a lot would be lost. Puppy Wiki, on the otherhand, despite great and ongoing attempts to add uptodate material to it, is full of obsolete and irritatingly wrong information, and does not contain backup information of much that would be lost if the forum suddenly vanished. Having said that, it is very difficult to keep up with all the information that can be contributed quickly to a forum; better if Wiki access was more connected and available easily such that, for example, forum howto posts were immediately also added to Wiki. There has to be a reliable guaranteed Wiki, even then, of course, but that is easier to arrange than a forum since the latter requires special server with phpBB running on it (though I suppose you do need special Wiki software too).

Why is it that puppylinux.com does not have a server for setting up a forum rather than just the Wiki?

Summary is that Puppy basically relies on a forum for most of its uptodate documentation, and that is unfortunate.

wiak

[rockedge]

We need a program that will parse this forum with some neural network deep machine learning technique and filter out the how to's and other "documentation" and export the results to some thing like https://readthedocs.org/ or some other solution.

[Sylvander]

He probably never hit the "Submit" button.

I believe I hit the "Preview" button, then when I went back to the text it was gone.
Hence there was nothing left to "Submit".

Sylvander, do you connect via wifi, or via direct-to-Ethernet cable? (No reason to ask, just making conversation.)

I connect via cable to my Virgin supplied hub, which NEVER gives any trouble.

By-the-way, I only found this thread by chance, since I'm not receiving any notifications of posts.
Hence the reason I haven't been replying until now.
I am registered as "watching this topic".

[Sylvander]

Is the post still up? Do you have a link to it?

My intended post was never posted, because all of the text disappeared from the composing window.

The forum has a 'bug' where issues with the tags may cause the entire post to appear blank when previewed or submitted - say, for example, if you leave a trailing space within the tags with the URL. You can still edit or quote the post and see that all the text is there, but the forum will display a blank post.

I have never suffered from this problem, and I think it wasn't happening then.

[nic007]

Can the contents on this server (the puppy forum) be backed up and stored somewhere else and/or carried over (with permission) to a new forum like rockedge's?

[bigpup]

By-the-way, I only found this thread by chance, since I'm not receiving any notifications of posts.

Check your E-mail service provider settings and make sure it is not stopping stuff from the forum, because it is coming from a http and not a https site.

[rockedge]

Can the contents on this server (the puppy forum) be backed up and stored somewhere else and/or carried over (with permission) to a new forum like rockedge's?

That was the original intent of the test site. To practice transferring the entire murga forum content to the new phpBB code. I even had the phpBB developers interested in giving advice on how to export and import the SQL file dump and attachments for a successful upgrade of a forum that contains over a million posts and threads and has 42000 plus users.

The hold up for testing is getting our hands on the MySQL .sql dump file and the actual collection of attachments. That's were we stand at the moment. No SQL export there can be no conversion to the new forum. We need access to the murga server to do the export of the database.

[Sylvander]

Check your E-mail service provider settings and make sure it is not stopping stuff from the forum, because it is coming from a http and not a https site.

I contacted my ISP [free] tech assistance.
He says he has made changes so that any/all things which were not being accepted will now BE accepted.
So I'll wait and see if that fixes the problem.

[greengeek]

My intended post was never posted, because all of the text disappeared from the composing window.

Yes, that is the bug I experience too, and Semme put his finger on my cellphone tethering as being the trigger.

The preview window loses all content and goes blank or else logs me out 95% of the time when I post via cellphone link.

I suspect this is an ISP fault rather than a forum timeout but I am not sure.

[Flash]

The forum could be backed up, though John Murga is the only one who can do it. As for somehow incorporating it into a newer forum, or moving it to a new forum, that's the $64,000 question. Previous discussions seem to come to the consensus that it would be hard to do. I have no idea, myself.

I remember that someone posted a script (in the How-to section, I think) that would download entire threads. That may be the best we could hope for. But then someone would have to curate each thread to make it useful. That would be a monumental job.

[musher0]

The forum could be backed up, though John Murga is the only one who can do it. As for somehow incorporating it into a newer forum, or moving it to a new forum, that's the $64,000 question. Previous discussions seem to come to the consensus that it would be hard to do. I have no idea, myself.

I remember that someone posted a script (in the How-to section, I think) that would download entire threads. That may be the best we could hope for. But then someone would have to curate each thread to make it useful. That would be a monumental job.

Hi Flash.

I understand your loyalty towards John Murga.

And we should all be grateful to him...
-- (me included, even if I'm not sure I'd personally like the guy given what I perceive as
-- his arrogance -- but even an arrogant person can have a generous side -- so saying
-- it out loud, I'm getting this obstacle out of the way.)
... for letting us Puppyists use his bandwith, making it available for this great forum free
of charge for so many years.

So I'll separate the forum problem from the personality problem.

The forum problem appears to be
-- this forum is getting old, we need to replace it rather urgently, according to rockedge,
saving as much content as possible. Correct?

-- the owner of this forum has been incommunicado for an unreasonable number of
months. I suppose everybody hopes he's ok, given the current pandemic, but it still
puts us Puppyists in an very awkward position.

I realize I'm not as technical as some others here. However I did help member augras
test a parallel forum, and did some research myself on a number of forum platforms a
few years ago. So I do know a couple of things about forums.

Many forums have database import capacity from one type of forum to another.
Because that's what a collection of forum posts are, a database. It seems that some
forum platforms do this type of import better than others.

Has anybody here done serious research on search engines concerning forum import?
If so, what were the results?

Tangent question: how far would we get copying this forum with a "syphon" (aka
"vacuum") software? (E.g. HTTrack)

Regards.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PS
I wrote the above post in good faith, and I hope everybody reading it is also in good faith.
If there are hidden agendas about PuppyLinux or the future of this forum, simply forget
I wrote this post. Thanks.

[nic007]

Should we set up a fund to acquire the services of a pro site hacker/miner?

[Sylvander]

So I'll wait and see if that fixes the problem.

So far, this morning, I've had 1 email, from Freecycle admin asking for a donation.
Previously there were no emails from anyone.
Nothing from the Puppy forum.

[rockedge]

Has anybody here done serious research on search engines concerning forum import?If so, what were the results?

Yes, extensively . And the results were successful. I've done many transfers of forum, photo gallerys (Gallery 3 mostly) and many many WordPress sites from one server to another or upgrades or some conversions.

Usually a SQL export of the database is the start. This forum's software phpBB has a conversion script system to automate the conversion and import of an older database version to a new one. I have spoken to people who have upgraded some forums with well over 2 million posts to the latest version successfully.

The entire reason I set up the test forum is to test and practice this export / import.

Do not forget that the many attachment files will also need to be moved if there is a server change. That is why I thought use a practice forum then run the actual update on the murga server where the new forum will then become the murga forum using the same domain and url. This way all the users will be doing the same thing but on a newer platform. And making large scale file transfers unnecessary as far as the attachments go.

The test forum was to be disposable and only for the test runs of the actual conversion. Plus I had the help from the phpBB dev's and others on their forum who have done such migrations at this scale or much larger.

Only problem is no one has access to the server currently hosting the Apache 2.2 and who knows what version or type of MySQL server is running, to do any of this. We can't even attempt to change any configurations of what is running now to improve performance.

[bigpup]

The effort to improve the forum is always a good thing.

However, this is still the question!

The one big question.

What forum is going to be kept up and running, year after year?
Whoever is supplying the forum, probably is the only one paying for it.
How long are they willing to do that?

[musher0]

The effort to improve the forum is always a good thing.

However, this is still the question!

The one big question.

What forum is going to be kept up and running, year after year?
Whoever is supplying the forum, probably is the only one paying for it.
How long are they willing to do that?

bigpup,

that "one big question" is the same for any community organization, whether it be
this forum, a neighorhood basketball club or even a local AA group meeting.

To be funded, the activity has to be beneficial, plus motivated and somewhat competent
people have to stick their neck out to run it.

We could pass the hat among forum members when they sign out? A number of us
could donate a sum to the forum when we die? Convince a rich man to create a
foundation for the forum? Hold a PuppyLinux Discussion Forum Drive on national TV?
Anything legal that works is fine.

BFN

[musher0]

Has anybody here done serious research on search engines concerning forum import?If so, what were the results?

Yes, extensively . And the results were successful. I've done many transfers of forum, photo gallerys (Gallery 3 mostly) and many many WordPress sites from one server to another or upgrades or some conversions.

Usually a SQL export of the database is the start. This forum's software phpBB has a conversion script system to automate the conversion and import of an older database version to a new one. I have spoken to people who have upgraded some forums with well over 2 million posts to the latest version successfully.

The entire reason I set up the test forum is to test and practice this export / import.

Do not forget that the many attachment files will also need to be moved if there is a server change. That is why I thought use a practice forum then run the actual update on the murga server where the new forum will then become the murga forum using the same domain and url. This way all the users will be doing the same thing but on a newer platform. And making large scale file transfers unnecessary as far as the attachments go.

The test forum was to be disposable and only for the test runs of the actual conversion. Plus I had the help from the phpBB dev's and others on their forum who have done such migrations at this scale or much larger.

Thanks for the report.

Did I get this right: your "practice forum" is on the murga server? So at some point
John Murga gave you some kind of permission to do this.

I don't think using the murga server is wise. IMO, the server should belong to the
PuppyForum, with links to the PuppyLinux distro, with some sort of person replacement
scheme, to avoid repeating the situation we're in. E.g. the owner, a trusted moderator
and the then leader of the Puppy distro should all know all access codes.
This would insure independance, plus resilience if something happens.
Even if this means a change of URL, it's worth it.

Only problem is no one has access to the server currently hosting the Apache 2.2 and who knows what version or type of MySQL server is running, to do any of this. We can't even attempt to change any configurations of what is running now to improve performance.

Geez... (Twilight Zone theme song here)...
The server of the current forum is on auto-pilot...

BFN.

[musher0]

This is really bugging me.

Maybe the first thing to do is try to discover "signs of life" of Mr. Murga.
"Putting the ox in front of the cart" -- before jumping to any conclusion.

Anybody searched the social media for a "wiggling" John Murga?
On Facebook, Linkedin and so on.

Does anybody know if he goes by another nickname? I ask because Murga can be a family
name of course, but IIRC, it also means "group" in Spanish.

Would there be a site generalizing this kind of search?

BFN.

[Galbi]

but IIRC, it also means "group" in Spanish.
.

Mmmm... kind of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murga

..."Murga is a form of popular musical theatre performed in Montevideo, Uruguay, Argentina and Badajoz, Spain during the Carnival season. Murga groups also operate in the Buenos Aires Carnival, though to a lesser extent than in Montevideo; the Argentine murga is more centred on dancing and less on vocals than the Uruguayan one. Uruguayan murga has a counterpart in Cadiz, Spain from which it is derived, the chirigota, but over time the two have diverged into distinct forms."...

[Mike Walsh]

@ musher0:-

Did I get this right: your "practice forum" is on the murga server? So at some point
John Murga gave you some kind of permission to do this.

Err.....nope. (Where did you dredge that pearl of wisdom up from?)

The test forum is here:-

https://puppylinux.rockedge.org/

.....running on rockedge's own 'commercial grade' server, and using his own domain, too. John Murga had no input on this at all. (Bit hard to see how he could, when he's been incommunicado for so long, hmm?)

The whole thing's an experiment, set up by another individual out of the goodness of their heart.....at no cost to you.....primarily to prove that it can be done.....and, as rockedge says, to "practice' doing the forum upgrade before attempting the real thing.

Not hard to understand at all.


Mike.