[Moin-user] Persistent loss of edits

[Roger Haase]

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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