There are multiple ways to get support regarding 'Tavi. Some of these are local to this web site, (or even to this page) and some are external through the support mechanism available at http://sourceforge.net/. The simplest way is to look/add something to the bottom of this page.

Support at this website

If you have a question regarding Tavi, we suggest looking through/changing the TaviFAQ. Or you might add your question on the bottom of this page if you don't feel that it's a TaviFAQ. For additional reading, which might solve your questions, we suggest reading TaviBugs, TaviInstructions and/or TaviDocumentation. Lastly, somebody else might have experienced the same problem and have already described it or provided a solution, which then would have been posted at either TaviBugs, TaviPatches or TaviSuggestions.

Support at sourceforge

The following list links to the support areas which we currently try to use besides this web-site. All of these can also be found directly from the [project page].

TaviSupport also doubles as an InterWiki for referencing single requests, like TaviSupport:802753. And you could [add a request] at SourceForge directly, but please check the [list first].

Requests for support

Add requests here if you don't like the other options. When answered, the answer will be found at TaviFAQ. That is if it's not an ongoing answer, which will be commented on this page. Please feel free to add answers or questions either here or in TaviFAQ.

Q: How do I handle site-wide defacement? My Tavi site just got defaced. All the pages were replaced with a page linked to a porn site. It was a script that replaced about three pages per second. What is the easist way to restore my site and if possible to limit further defacement from this individual or others? --CurtisNelson

A: If the originating IP wasn´t a DialUp?-IP you could use the /admin-Interface to Block a specific IP from accessing your Wiki --SebastianFeltel

Unfortunately, I blocked the IP but it came back in less than a day. Same script, looks like it's in a cron and tries to replae my site every 6-8 hours or so. I ended up locking the entire wiki down to my subnet in Apache. I also ran across a bug where restore from the history does not accurately restore all wiki links, so I had to manually add wiki links back into each page. It's coming from mailllist1.com which does not have a very reputable name with the spam blocking lists. --CurtisNelson
I've had three similar attacks in the first week of Feb 2004 that in the end required restoratons from a backup. This is clearly not a problem that will disappear by itself so any further advice/fixes for this problem gratefully received. --WebElements

A: It's quite easy to undo mass defacements if you know how page edits show up in the backend database. New versions of a page do not replace old versions, but just add a new line to the database table with a higher version number, thus hiding the older versions. So if you just delete these new entries, everything will be as before, and not even the RecentChanges would list the changes made. Unfortunately you have to directly interact with the backend database. I recommend to install a MySQL-Frontend like [phpMyAdmin], but of course you can use the default command line client, too. First do a full backup of your wiki by using the "Dump" function. Then delete all unwanted entries with a line like DELETE FROM pages WHERE author = 'frodo.mailistdirect1.com' or DELETE FROM pages WHERE date > 20040201072400 (insert the date and time of the first unwanted change). --HermannSchwarting

Q: As per the Q above, it would seem that there is a problem with the wiki code. We require that users be logged in before they can post in the wiki but this bot is posting without ever logging in.

Q: Where can I find the Tavi option to "restore from the history"?

In the above paragraph it says: "restore from the history does not accurately restore all wiki links"?

Q: I had a similar attack recently to the one Curtis described above. Blocking IPs seem to be a limited solution at best. Is there some way to change the language in the wiki to confuse an automated script. Like avoid links named "Edit This Document" or instead of the url index.php?action=edit&page=WikiWiki have the "edit action" be something the wiki administrator can set (like action=scribble) so a script can't target those links?

Q: Also: from the wiki/lib/main.php script:

// Don't let people do too many things too quickly.
if($ActionList[$action][2] != '')
  { rateCheck($pagestore->dbh, $ActionList[$action][2]); }

// Expire old versions, etc.
$pagestore->maintain();
?>

Can either of these be set in such a way to discourage mass automated edits and the loss of pages deep in the history of the wiki?

A: Yes of course. Use entries like the following in your config.php. You can control how long the history of pages is kept:

// Old versions of pages will be deleted after $ExpireLen days.  If $ExpireLen
//   is set to 0, old versions of pages (and pages set to empty) will never
//   be removed from the database.
$ExpireLen = 14;

And you can control the edit and view limits of your visitors:

// $RatePeriod determines how many seconds of time to record a visitor's access
//   to the site.  If it is set to zero, ALL RATE CHECKING AND IP ADDRESS
//   BLOCKING WILL BE DISABLED.
$RatePeriod = 300;
// $RateView determines how many pages a visitor can view in $RatePeriod
//   amount of time.
$RateView   = 100;
// $RateSearch determines how many processor-intensive operations (search,
//   diff, etc.) a visitor can perform in $RatePeriod amount of time.
$RateSearch = 50;
// $RateEdit determines how many edits a visitor can make in $RatePeriod
//   amount of time.
$RateEdit   = 20;

--HermannSchwarting

Q: I have just installed 'Tavi 0.24', created a wiki user for mysql using the instructions but that doesn't seem to work. When I try to connect to the wiki from my browser, I get the following error message :

   Error executing database query.
   Please contact the administrator for assistance.
   LOCK TABLES localrate WRITE

A: This sound like it could be one out of two problems. Either you created the databases with a prefix, and your configurations says that you didn't use a prefix. (Check config.php for a line similar to $DBTablePrefix = 'local';. If the local-part is missing, add it. ) Or you might have in some mysterious way actually not created the databases, so please do the installation of the databases again.

A: The problem comes from the first possibility ! I simply set $DBTablePrefix = '' and now that work great! Thank you :-)

Q: Do there exist a php-script to do the diff's on windows?

A: i've started to analyze the diff program - and maybe (if there is enough free time) i'll get an php port working in some weeks (i hope). Heres is the [diff2.8.4 calltree] (but we need only a small part - with hundreds of struct/if/strcat...) --AiForge

A: or we could use other-wikis diff (with authors permission) - [PukiWiki-Diff] --AiForge

A: I used the diff.exe that comes with cygwin, and that seems to work fine. You don't need to install all of cygwin however; The only files I've found to be necessary are diff.exe, cygintl-1.dll, cygintl-2.dll, and cygwin1.dll. I'd be willing to e-mail them to anybody who needs them, provided that's permissible in the cygwin license. --Qualidafial

Q: I installed Tavi 0.24 but I can't make it work, I always get the message: Fatal error: Failed opening required 'lib/init.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /usr/local/lib/tavi/lib/main.php on line 72. What's this?

A: The .htaccess file (which you were supposed to create in your web path -- see installation instructions) is being ignored. Make sure your web server allows .htaccess files (in the Apache config, you need to make sure the directory is configured with "AllowOverride? All").

Q: Logo floating disabled by CSS. I use Tavi 0.24 and recognise that the line after the page header is drawn below the top right logo even with the style "float: right". In version 0.22 the page was floating around the logo. I figured out that by disabling the definition div#header hr { clear: both; } in the style sheet I got the same behaviour as previous versions. What is this definition for? Do I get problems without it?

A: The definition you've commented out has one purpose and that is to make the hr-line go below the logo. If you want the logo to cross the line, and extend into the text this line should be removed, as you've done.

Q: I get "Error Selecting Database." I have double checked the config.php but everything is okay. Is there something else I should adjust?

A: This happens either when $DBName is misspelled (see config.php), or when the databases haven't been created yet. Are you sure you have the right name, and that you've created that database?

*I realized what I did wrong! My DBname was off. Cheers!

Q: My TAVI runs far too slowly once too many users get online. I've installed the GZIP mod, but I didn't notice much difference in the speed. We're talking 3-5 minute load times for individual wiki pages. I know it's not the server, because my PHPBB runs like a dream. ANyone else having this problem?

Q I can use "View document history" and "Compute difference" on WIn32 now ( a cmd/command-line-window will pop up when pressing either of the buttons ) , however, there is no green box and yellow box appear on the "Computer difference" page even though the2 pages are not the same. What should I do for getting the diff really up? (I think the problem is that the computed result of the program diff is not return/import to/into Tavi, am I wrong?)

A: Win32 does not come with a diff program built-in. See the question above, "Do there exist a php-script to do the diff's on windows?" and the associated answers. --Qualidafial

Q: I am getting the error like the person above:

   Error executing database query.
   Please contact the administrator for assistance.
   LOCK TABLES wiki_rate WRITE

I've quadruple-checked my $DBTablePrefix? settings and they are correct. I created the database using the RickVanLieshout/InitDatabasePHPScript, in case that means anything.

Any ideas?

A: I had the same difficulty, and I never figured out why. You should try installing phpMyAdmin and verify the database and tables really did get created. If not, try extracting the sql queries from the php init script, and running them manually in phpMyAdmin. --Qualidafial

A: I too had the same problem. For some reason, 'tavi didn't create the prefix (wiki_*) for the tables. so just load up phpMyAdmin or [MySQL-Front] and rename the tables -- zer0fill

Q: How to easy include a page in my mydomain.com? I try to understand the script for take from mysql-db the text of a page created with mydomain.com/taviwiki can give more details about it? thanks :

Q: I do not have command line access to my web server and hacked the script to create the tables which seemed to work. The config.php file creation is a bit of a puzzle. I think I got but I get a browser window with: LIB_ErrorDatabaseSelect?

What did I screw up?

Q: How do I set the default comparison when clicking on "View document history"? Right now, it just shows what the last person wrote; no comparison

A: I think I found it in action/history.php ($previous_ver = 0;) but it is not too logical how it is displayed. It looks like it counts from the bottom up than top to bottom - zer0fill

Q: My Web Host just upgraded to mySQL 4.0, and now I cannot save changes to pages. I get this error message:

Error executing database query. Please contact the administrator for assistance. UPDATE tavi_pages SET time=2004-02-19 19:47:55, supercede=NULL WHERE title='WebLinks?' AND version=60"

I received this reply from my web host: "I'm pretty certain that the SQL query [you gave] is invalid, as the time being set isn't quoted correctly. If this worked in previous versions of MySQL, I'm not sure why. My bet is that if you can find the line of code that is failing and change it to something like this instead:

UPDATE tavi_pages SET time='2004-02-19 19:47:55', supercede=NULL WHERE title='WebLinks?' AND version=60.

So it seems as if the difference is a pair of single quotes? Any ideas?

-- bhhenry

The solution to your problem is detailed here:

http://www.moztips.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page=MySQL

Are you using Dreamhost too ? - JayS

Cannot update database, aka TaviSupport:918537. Not a very descriptive title, I know, but I don't know what else to call it; basically any operations that involving writing to a 'Tavi table fails. Exact error messages and scenarios in the SF tracker. -- RichardBerg

Ok, guess I should paste in some more info to help you guys help me. I've been running 'Tavi for a long time; now at v0.25. Recently, people started getting strange errors when trying to access the wiki, as if it was unable to write to mywiki_rate. I then disabled rate limiting, which allowed the site to be browsed normally.

However, it seems the underlying problem didn't go away. Other attempts to write to the DB still create errors, e.g. "LOCK TABLES avisynth_pages WRITE, avisynth_interwiki WRITE, avisynth_sisterwiki WRITE, avisynth_links WRITE" when editing a page.

Any ideas? I run several other mysql-intensive apps off this web account but they all seem to be doing fine.

Followup, 3/30 -- Further notes: downgrading to 0.22 changes the error message but doesn't help. Copying the tables and pointing Tavi to the new copies doesn't help. My ISP (HostRocket?) insists they have done DB tests with no errors and I'm inclined to agree.

RichardBerg buckles down and learns some PHP/SQL -- while playing with the queries Tavi sends to the DB, I discovered that phpMyAdmin threw privilege errors whenever using the LOCK command. Some Googling revealed that the permissions necessary to run this command changed as of MySQL 4.xx. The jury's out on whether an ISP upgrade was my problem, but once I hear back for them we'll know for sure. Meantime, commenting out the lock queries seems to work ok without noticeable performance or corruption issues.