Quick update...

Well... I've implemented a new auto repair mechanism for the forums. This is somewhat more advanced than the quick fix one I implemented weeks ago.

It doesn't repair on every request as the original one did, but it does repair more tables... mainly the ones that have so far caused problems.

So, if you get a database problem, refresh your browser a few times and keep an eye out for 'AEF' in the top left corner. If that appears it means the auto repair code has reported some messages which are embedded in the document as HTML comments. For this to work, the site now adds a new session cookie which counts requests (it's the one with _rpc on the end), so please don't block this.

I have already this afternoon experienced a database error, and I kept refreshing the page and it sorted itself out.

However, there is one more tweak I would like to make to it, to make it more robust (and hopefully able to automagically resolve the situation we had this morning). I'm working with Traveler and Savage to try and fix the problem thats blocking this. Once thats done, we should hopefully be able to automatically recover from the DB errors that have caused us problems since the site went live with SMF.

So, to re-iterate... if you get a database problem (not 'Unable to connect' or 'Exceeded maximum connections), then try refreshing the page upto 10 times... you should hopefully get an AEF in the top left and the board should spring back into life. If it doesn't and you have AEF, look at the page source, copy the comment at the top that details the auto repair results and mail it to me. Do NOT sit there constantly refreshing the page if it doesn't fix the problem in 10 refreshes.

Thats it for now.

Athena