Site search and Talk search problems

We're currently working on site search.

As of now:

1. Site search overall should be slow.
2. Talk message search will be incomplete. Within the hour the past few months will be accessible in full, but older material will only come in as the day goes on.

All the recent site fixes are appreciated. Go Tim, go!

Yes, thanks..

Is this anything to do with why touchstones aren't working this morning? Any time I open up a post to edit, the touchstones are lost ... just the whirring 'searching' cog to the right of the post.

>5 klarusu: Same for me. Also site search isn't working at all:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/219002

Touchstones were not working for me yesterday. I have yet to try today.

I am happy not to use search/touchstones for a day to have the use of the rest of the site. Would others prefer to have the whole site down while this work is being done?

>8 MarthaJeanne: MarthaJeanne, I think people are reporting problems that they have noticed , that may have not been noticed by LT. Of course I would not prefer to have the entire site down I was not aware - as I suspect the vast majority of people on LT , that a lot of work was being done.

>8 MarthaJeanne: 'I am happy not to use search/touchstones for a day to have the use of the rest of the site'

Agreed, but Tim's post in >1 timspalding: indicated they expected search to be slow not that it would stop working entirely. I thought it might be worth reporting that site search wasn't working at all in case Tim and team were not aware of this effect.If it's a planned outage then that's fine.

Site search not working for me yesterday and this morning. I don't see much about it in this chain. Is there more somewhere else? Any idea as to when it will be back? Thanks.

Yeah, the system crashed. We're working on it. The good news is that things will be better. The bad news is, not yet…

>12 timspalding: Thanks--was wondering if the problem wasn't on my end.

Yeah, we're dealing with—we think—disk corruption on the search box. (Don't worry about data. The search box has no data per se, and we have lots of backups even if it did.)

Ah, good to know. I was wondering what was up with the touchstones. Good luck with the fixin'!

If y'all at headquarters need a lunch break, I found this in the back pantry.



Thanks for all your hard work.

>8 MarthaJeanne: Exactly what the others have said. I don't think anyone was complaining, merely checking this was also why touchstones were temperamental. I only saw reference to site search so I wasn't sure whether it was a different issue.

>16 2wonderY: Now I'm hungry, and I just had dinner. Thanks..

And, of course, when site search is down, you can't do a search to see if anyone else has posted about the problem!

>19 lilithcat:

You can -- in google :)

Well, just opening bug collectors gives a few topics you could check

>22 Collectorator:

Not everyone does, and not everyone has Bug Collectors open (or is even aware of it, as evidenced by the number of bugs reported in Talk About LibraryThing).

>24 Collectorator: I wrestle with this problem every day ;-)

>24 Collectorator: >25 klarusu: LOL! I had noticed the lack of search/touchstones, but had no idea what was going on until someone pointed me to this thread. I can wait for the fix. Glad the LT crew is working on it.

Thanks, Tim & co. Maybe I'll actually be motivated to do some reading now instead of just fooling around on LT all day! :D

These conversations are a crack up. :)

Search is back. Yay!

Nice job, everybody. :)

So, do we have to go back to yesterday's posts and edit to set the Touchstones?

>31 2wonderY: I tried that, and they still didn't work, but when I used them in a new post, they did.

>31 2wonderY:

Try copying and pasting. Edit the post to NOTHING. Then edit it to past back in the touchstones.

FYI: Mike and Chris fixed the index corruption that caused this.

We are currently optimizing the indexes "shard-by-shard." There will be minutes when a given search won't return. It should be 1% of the time, but that 1% will be broken.

Note that new data may or may not get in immediately over the next few days.

Also note that the "Titles only" facet, available under "other" is totally empty for now and will be for the near future, as it's a lot of data, and we're prioritizing updated, optimized data in the other shards.

>34 timspalding: Good to hear that the problem with corruption has been fixed. How much money was paid out and to whom?

>35 anglemark:

Let's just say we have a few people on our payroll who don't show up for work.

Are the improvements to site search going to improve touchstone-search and list-search results eventually? I still have a lot of trouble finding popular books with those searches.

>33 timspalding: Try copying and pasting. Edit the post to NOTHING. Then edit it to past back in the touchstones.

I tried that, and it didn't work -- at least not with multi-book posts.

No, let me clarify that. My old posts with touchstones are OK, touchstones working -- except for the ones I tried to post or edit during the outage. Unfortunately, that includes my list of ninteen books read so far this year. But not really a big deal. I'm just glad the system is up and running and you folks keep making improvements to LT!

OK, I played with the post a little more, and I'm getting the touchstones in -- a little slow, but they are there. Yay, thank you!! :)

Are the improvements to site search going to improve touchstone-search and list-search results eventually? I still have a lot of trouble finding popular books with those searches.

This all started in an effort to fix it. Unfortunately, the massive amounts of data we were pushing in caused the disk to fill, the indexes to corrupt and fire to rain from the sky.

So, yes, that's the goal. But first we're getting it stable.

I still can't get touchstones back in my 'multiple' posts no matter what I try - just get 'No results'. Also happening if I try a new one in this post. Not impatient but just letting you know it's still happening.

Sitesearch is down again, until morning.

I was just about to report this and I find it old news! Nevertheless, it's good to know, it's not just my account :-)

>42 timspalding: Which morning, and where?

Not everyone lives in the same timezone as you!

>44 DuncanHill: GMT-5

>45 anglemark: Thank you!

>46 DuncanHill: Det var så lite, så!

Parseltongue…

>48 timspalding: No, Swedish, a beautiful language. It sounds like singing.

>40 timspalding: Thanks :-)

Not sure if this is part of the same problem, but when I just tried to touchstone an author and a title in the same message the touchstones disappeared. The title stayed if I removed the author touchstone and there was no problem touchstoning two titles.

>51 amanda4242: It's probably related - I'd wait until Tim says it's all fixed and have another go.

Hmm. See if you can replicate?

(Testing: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.)

Hmm. Yup.

Fixed. Thanks.

I'm guessing the search cache is still building? I've got some things that I've done through common knowledge that aren't showing up in search. And it's been over a week.

Yes, we're still working on it! Please see http://www.librarything.com/topic/219466#5484580.

>56 kristilabrie: There are too many threads with similar or linked issues. It's hard to keep up with which one gets the update and which one doesn't.