When The Bug Genie mailing queue is broken

Issue 1: When message arent sent due to unserialize()

Finding the issue

The mailing queue from TheBugGenie happened to be broken. The issue was not noticed until a maintenance check made me run the cronjob and to see an error message such as.

 renoirb@project5:~$ php /srv/webplatform/buggenie/tbg_cli mailing:process_mail_queue --limit=20
 Processing mail queue ...
 The following notice has stopped further execution:

 unserialize(): Error at offset 1931 of 1938 bytes
 occured in
 /srv/webplatform/buggenie/modules/mailing/classes/B2DB/TBGMailQueueTable.class.php, line 61

 Backtrace:
 unserialize() /srv/webplatform/buggenie/modules/mailing/classes/B2DB/TBGMailQueueTable.class.php, line 61
 TBGMailQueueTable->getQueuedMessages()
 /srv/webplatform/buggenie/modules/mailing/classes/cli/CliMailingProcessMailQueue.class.php, line 50
 CliMailingProcessMailQueue->do_execute()
 /srv/webplatform/buggenie/core/classes/TBGCliCommand.class.php, line 52
 TBGCliCommand->execute()
 /srv/webplatform/buggenie/tbg_cli, line 102

 SQL queries:
 (1) [1.6ms] from /srv/webplatform/buggenie/core/classes/B2DB/TBGScopesTable.class.php, line 100:

The error lies in:

 unserialize(): Error at offset 1931 of 1938 bytes

The code in /srv/webplatform/buggenie/modules/mailing/classes/B2DB/TBGMailQueueTable.class.php at line 61 says is within a while loop:

 if($res)
 {
   while ($row = $res->getNextRow())
   {
       $message = $row->get(self::MESSAGE);
       $messages[$row->get(self::ID)] = unserialize($message);  // <-- HERE
   }
 }

After checking the database server and reading queries, I could see the serialization from the database column in question:

O:11:"TBGMimemail":24:{s:10:" * charset";s:5:"utf-8";s:18:" * default_message";s:138:"<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><html><title>The Bug Genie email</title><body>Empty message...</body></html>";s:7:" * from";a:2 {s:4:"name";s:32:"WebPlatform Docs Project manager";s:7:"address";s:31:"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa@aa.org";}s:5:" * to";a:1:{i:0;a:2 {s:4:"name";s:5:"Aaaaa";s:7:"address";s:15:"jjjjj@bbbbb.jjj";}}s:5:" * cc";a:0:{}s:6:" * bcc";a:0:{}s:15:" * replacements";a:5 {s:17:"%thebuggenie_url%";s:30:"http://project.webplatform.org";s:24:"%link_to_reset_password%";s:0:"";s:18:"%link_to_activate%";s:0:"";s:16:"%user_buddyname%";s:5:"Aaaaa";s:15:"%user_username%";s:5:"Aaaaa";}s:7:" * sep1";s:23:"_1_3233387863387136356c";s:7:" * sep2";s:23:"_2_75617135695636503979";s:10:" * headers";a:8:{s:8:"X-Mailer";s:3:"TBG";s:7:"Subject";s:73:"Re: [dabblet] Bug report #8 - Cannot save nor save-as gists (500s & 422s)";s:4:"Date";s:31:"Wed, 02 Oct 2013 19:25:15 +0000";s:12:"MIME-Version";s:3:"1.0";s:10:"Message-ID";s:49:"<_1_3233387863387136356c@project.webplatform.org>";s:4:"From";s:66:"WebPlatform Docs Project manager <aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa@aa.org>";s:11:"Return-Path";s:33:"<aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa@aa.org>";s:2:"To";s:25:""Aaaaa" <jjjjj@bbbbb.jjj>";}s:10:" * subject";s:73:"Re: [dabblet] Bug report #8 - Cannot save nor save-as gists (500s & 422s)";s:21:" * subject_translated";N;s:11:" * template";s:11:"issueupdate";s:22:" * template_parameters";a:3:{s:5:"issue";O:8:"TBGIssue":72:{s:9:" * _title";s:43:"Cannot save nor save-as gists (500s & 422s)";s:9:" * _links";N;s:9:" * _files";a:1:{i:14;O:7:"TBGFile":10:{s:16:" * _content_type";s:9:"image/png";s:15:" * _uploa ded_by";N;s:15:" * _uploaded_at";s:10:"1380741825";s:17:" * _real_filename";s:55:"116_1380741825_Screen Shot 2013-10-02 at 3.28.14 PM.png";s:8:" * _name";s:40:"Screen Shot 2013-10-02 at 3.28.14 PM.png";s:11:" * _content";s:77032:"

NOTE: The data shown here has been anonymized. But the length of the values were kept intact.

While trying to use PHP unserialize the field we get the same error we had in the previous stack trace:

 unserialize(): Error at offset 1931 of 1938 bytes

This means that the class TBGMimemail will be unserialized with this data but the unserialized data seems to have something broken.

To fix the issue

Ensure no cron job will be running on server running The Bug Genie
Run manually the mailing:process_mail_queue command until you are sure the next message is the broken one

php /srv/webplatform/buggenie/tbg_cli mailing:process_mail_queue --limit=20
When you are at --limit=1 and it breaks, it means its the broken one
Add those lines before the loop, before if($res){:

$hack = TBGMimemail::createNewFromMessage('Borken message hack’, 'passing around, sorry for that’, null, array(‘my_own@gmail.com’));
$hack->setFrom(‘renoirb@project1.dho.wpdn’);
Replace the part unserialize($message); with $hack

// Put the hack like so:
$hack = TBGMimemail::createNewFromMessage('Borken message hack’, 'passing around, sorry for that’, null, array(‘my_own@gmail.com’));
$hack->setFrom(‘renoirb@project1.dho.wpdn’);
if($res)
{
while ($row = $res->getNextRow())
{
$message = $row->get(self::MESSAGE);
$messages[$row->get(self::ID)] = $hack;
//$messages[$row->get(self::ID)] = unserialize($message);
}
}
Run the mailing:process_mail_queue manually, the email should pass
Comment the $hack and uncomment the real code.
Make sure all the queue is processed