[Moin-user] Persistent loss of edits

Roger Haase crosseyedpenguin at yahoo.com
Tue Sep 18 14:11:05 EDT 2007


Assuming there really is a missing edits bug, a guess is that it is a
client-side problem rather than server-side.  To be a server-side bug,
either Moin or Apache would somehow have to maintain the state of the
old text-area and substitute the old copy for the incoming new copy. 
Well, Moin has an old copy on disk but it is hard to believe Moin would
sometimes become confused and substitute the disk copy for the incoming
textarea.

On the other hand, the user's browser maintains an old copy of the
textarea contents.  The old contents could be retrieved by clicking a
Reset button (but there isn't any Reset button on the wiki edit form)
or a javascript function calling the form or textarea element reset
function.

So a thought is the bug may be in some bit of javascript code on the
client side.  It intercepts the Submit button click, resets the
textarea, and submits the form?  The FCK Editor has some very complex
javascript code and there are calls to the reset function in
wordWindow.js and controlWindow.js.  But where are these called from?

I am going to try turning off the GUI editor to see if that eliminates
the problem.  The only options for turning it off that I see are to add
the following to wikiconfig.py:

    editor_default = 'text' 
    editor_ui = 'text' 
    editor_force = True

My only user that has reported the problem is off again and it may be a
long time before she returns to edit the wiki.

Roger Haase 


--- Rick Vanderveer <rick.vanderveer at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm the other person who has reported this problem.  I haven't gone
> thru all
> the diagnosis that Roger has, but I can say that this problem is
> consistent
> for every person who uses IE to edit the wiki.  It doesn't matter if
> it's
> IE6 or IE7.  Firefox is never a problem.  (But it's hard to get
> people to
> remember to use Firefox, and I can't force them because we have
> several
> internal pages that only work in IE. grrrrrr).
> 
> The only thing special about my setup (not really special) is that
> I'm using
> domain authentication via mod_auth_sspi, running on Windows XP, with
> FastCGI.  I've also made some small screen.css tweaks to the 'modern'
> theme,
> but I can't imagine that would cause any problems either (I suspect
> it's
> something with the authentication, but I don't really know how to
> effectively diagnose it).
> 
> -Rick
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> > From: moin-user-bounces at lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:
> > moin-user-bounces at lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Roger Haase
> > Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 3:49 PM
> > To: moin-user at lists.sourceforge.net
> > Subject: Re: [Moin-user] Persistent loss of edits
> >
> > I had a user with a similar problem in a thread titled "User Says
> Page
> > Edits Are Not Always Saved" in June of this year.
> >
> > This user had reported the problem off and on over the last two
> years.
> > In the most extreme case she reported having to make the same
> editing
> > change 4 or 5 times before it was saved. She is using IE 6 on
> Windows/XP,
> > the server is on a Fedora Core 6, was Core 4.  Moin versions
> probably varied
> > from 1.3.x to 1.5.8 over the timeframe.
> >
> > The problem was not solved.  The best documentation I was able to
> collect
> > was when she sent me a email stating the problem had just happened
> and she
> > was able to tell me the phrase she was trying to insert into the
> page.
> >
> > Using the page info action, I found the server timestamp of the
> sucessful
> > operation and was able to then review the Apache log for prior
> > transactions.  Because the user did not trust that her changes were
> going to
> > be saved, she was in the habit of making a small change, saving the
> page,
> > edit, save, edit, etc.
> >
> > By looking at the moin page info and the apache log, I was able to
> > determine which POST entries in the Apache log related to
> successful
> > updates. The increasing lengths of successive POST entries showed
> her
> > editing progress.
> >
> > Just prior to the successful save timestamp of the incident, there
> was a
> > entry where the POST response length was decreased by 21 bytes. 
> This is the
> > difference between the length of the messages:
> >
> >   Thank you for your changes. Your attention to detail is
> appreciated.
> >
> >   You did not change the page content, not saved!
> >
> > I think that was the log entry of the problem incident.  That was
> as far
> > as I got in debugging the problem.  It appears Moin is saying it
> received no
> > changes for the problem POST.  I suspected a bug in IE6, possibly
> related to
> > a cut and paste operation into the textarea -- that hunch was only
> based on
> > googling and finding very obscure references.
> > However, I could not reproduce the problem.
> >
> > If you can reproduce the problem at will, that would be a great
> start.
> >
> > Roger Haase
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- Bob Jackson <bobj at soc.duke.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > For several months now I have been experiencing a problem with
> loss of
> > > edits while using Moinmoin.  It occurs when both the "Save
> Changes"
> > > and
> > > "Preview" buttons are used and the outcome is that things go back
> to
> > > the original page before the edit was started.  In the case of
> > > previewing, nothing is previewed.
> > >
> > > This is a time sensitive phenomenon.  It never occurs with quick
> > > edits, but by my estimate becomes a risk sometime after 5-10
> minutes
> > > of editing.
> > > Basically I now make sure that I've cut to the clipboard any
> > > significant edits before saving or previewing to cover against
> losses.
> > >
> > > The server environment is:
> > >
> > > Centos 4.x server running apache 2.0.52-32.3.ent.centos4 Moinmoin
> > > 1.5.8 connecting via SSL
> > >
> > > The workstation environment is:
> > >
> > > Fedora Core 7
> > > Firefox 2.0.0.6
> > >
> > > However, this problem has persisted over several releases of
> Moinmoin,
> > > Fedora Core and Firefox.  It also predates the use of SSL.  It
> also
> > > occurs with users of Internet Explorer, although I do most of the
> > > editing on our wiki instances.
> > >
> > > I have searched the list archives repeatedly for clues and have
> found
> > >
> > > nothing that has helped.  The cookie_lifetime is set for 12
> hours, but
> > > in my preferences, I remember login info.  The edit_locking
> parameter
> > > is set to "lock 120".  Reverse DNS lockups work fine on my system
> and
> > > the problem occurs regardless of the the log_reverse_dns_lookups
> > > setting.
> > >
> > > Enabling MOIN_DEBUG in moin.cgi has not produced any helpful
> error
> > > messages, although it's possible I'm not looking in the right
> places.
> > >
> > > My hunch is that this is not really a Moinmoin problem and may be
> an
> > > Apache or network setting issue, but I don't know where to look
> or
> > > what diagnostic strategy to follow.  Would really appreciate some
> > > clues to look for or some suggested strategies to follow.
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance.   -- BobJ
> > >
> > > ______________________________________________________
> > > Bob Jackson
> > > Department of Sociology
> > > Duke University
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>
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