Okay, since no one I PM'd is online, I'll open it up in case anyone knows

Does anyone know why do we use the MySQL FullText search instead of the vB internal search?

Just a guess, but the SQL search probably works better/more efficiently than the vBulletin code. As I understand it, everything on the board is stored in SQL anyway, so searching the content in "native" format, as it were, probably uses fewer resources than having to go thru a vB interpolation routine. Takes the middleman out of the loop, more or less.

But I don't really know all that much about vB, so take that for what it's worth.

I believe Nick did everything he could to streamline WF when we were having the massive problems...maybe that was part of it?

I was wondering the same thing earlier when I looked to see if there was some easy thing that didn't get checked or something that made the "Tex" thing not work. I don't mess with stuff I don't understand and creeped back out of there, but I was curious about the FullText vs VB search thing too.

I honestly don't have a clue, Hero. I'll e-mail Nick and ask though.

Well, sent you my two cents via PM - might be a good starting point!

Oh, I sorted the member queue today...all but two were ad/lebanese porn spammers.

Kyle's PM was helpful. Still not sure how to rebuild the search indicies (but I'm pretty sure I do have to), but it's a start. None of our exceptions to the 4-char minimum work currently. Will do more research tomorrow.

Does the "Rebuild Search Index" entry under AdminCP -> Maintenance -> Update Counters not work, or is that what you're looking for?

I don't remember whether that works for only vB internal search or both (but that's easy enough to check), but at any rate I need to find the "index these words anyway" option for FullText, since the vB internal equivalent setting doesn't propagate.

All right folks, here's the deal: While there's a ton of words that Fulltext won't index despite being long enough, called "stop words", there's no concept of "start words", words that will be indexed despite their short length.

So this means we've got a choice - we can either keep the setting as-is, a 4 character minimum (sorry tex, anyone searching for bsg, php, who*, tos, tng, etc.) or set it to 3 and rebuild the index (sorry anyone who wanted to search "dr" or "vb", but we're not setting it to 2). This will cause a not-insignificant disk space increase, and a somewhat less significant increase in search time.

*although "who" is a stop word and won't be indexed anyway. I can probably change that though.

Why have I been locked out of the Execute SQL panel?

Show of hands: do nothing, shorten the min length, or change to vB internal search?

Flip it over to vB internal, see if that makes a difference. We can go from there.

Get your votes in by tonight, I'll be offline for a few hours starting... now.

I think this is a decision that should be made by people who know what all that stuff means.

Hey, I know just about enough about all this to look at O2C with awe. But logically, if one search widget ain't working the way you want, try the other one before you go digging into the guts of the board.

My vote is for whatever you think is best, O2C.

The one issue I have with possibly switching over to vB internal is that Apache is already about as shaky as a bobblehead in a Ford Festiva. I'd rather keep as much as possible being done by MySQL itself.

I've no problem with slightly slower searches and something that comes basically for free storage-wise with MySQL. Search is one of those things that is OK to not be "snappy," y'know?

Fuck, maybe we should just shutter the board while it reindexes, give everyone a little time to cool off. Either that, or maybe the reindexing will slow 'em down.

Seriously, where did we get our copy of Apache, and who installed it? Apachectl doesn't work at all for crying out loud. I'm tempted to go get Apache 2 or at least recompile 1.3 and reconfigure it myself.

I'm going to see if I can find out how big the index is currently, and reindex at 3. If it bloats the DB too much, I'll delete it and try switching over to vB internal. If that slows things to a crawl, I'll switch back to Fulltext and reindex at 4 with sincere apologies to those mentioned before plus Anc.

But I'm going to do it tomorrow, when I don't have to be awake in 5 hours.

Damn, I'd love it if I didn't have to kick Apache in the ass every seven days or so.

Anyway, good luck.

Now this sounds like a plan.

Are we still using the same copy (copies?) of Apache from two or three board iterations ago? Before Elwood was the owner?

No, Apache comes with the server, not the board software. It is changed out any time we change servers.

You boys are so smart.

Irony - n. when you do an operation practically guaranteed to bloat the database and it shrinks it instead because it removed all the pruned threads' indicies.