I have a similiar issue to http://drupal.org/node/32806.

I activated pathauto on my installation, 4.7.x when it already had over 30,000 nodes.

Bulk updating nodes got me a handful of aliases, then timed out. I repeated this a number of times and have about 8,000 aliases now.

I got bored of it though, and tried changing the max_timeout in settings.php, and strangely, pathauto is saving my settings, but not executing any more bulk alias updates.

I removed the max_timeout from the settings.php and tried to go back to letting it time out and it's still not executing any bulk alias changes. I tried turning off the pathauto module and turning it back on again.

I can probably get all my aliases straight with a shell script, but I'm worried pathauto will never be the same again.

Is there anything I can do to fix this? Is there a variable I can delete or something?

Comments

greggles’s picture

greggles
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Primary language English
Location Denver, Colorado, USA
commented

There aren't any variables internally that I know of that would prevent pathauto from working.

The advice you linked is from a year ago, so it's possible that things have changed (I didn't read it right now).

Generally I'd say that you can fully remove pathauto from a system by deleting the variables in the variable table whose name begins with pathauto_ and also deleting all records in the url_alias table and then re-installing pathauto, visiting the settings page (all the settings would be deleted when deleting from pathauto_) and then redoing the bulk update. However,, like any major change, I would suggest doing it on a test site first of course to make sure you end up with a result that you desire.

calebtr’s picture

calebtr commented

Thanks - I verified that pathauto was operating normally when I created and edit nodes. I'm loving it, though if it hasn't been filed already, the "bulk" controls are misleading.

greggles’s picture

greggles
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Primary language English
Location Denver, Colorado, USA
commented

Can you clarify how the bulk update boxes are misleading?

I'm not familiar with how that is the case.

greggles’s picture

greggles
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Primary language English
Location Denver, Colorado, USA
commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Closing to clear the issue queue. Feel free to respond, but this helps keep the list of problems shorter and easier to manage.

calebtr’s picture

calebtr commented

Hmm, I don't think I meant that the controls were misleading. The implicit idea that pathauto can 'bulk update' paths on any site is misleading. Perhaps all that is needed is an explicit warning that bulk updates may fail on large sites, both in hook_help and hook_settings.

I see that a cron-able bulk update is already a minor issue and there are a lot of major issues ahead of it, so let's keep this closed.

I love this module.

greggles’s picture

greggles
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Primary language English
Location Denver, Colorado, USA
commented
Status: Closed (fixed) » Active

calebtr - that seems like a reasonable thing to add as a warning until we get the cron based system working (that could be a while).

Could you generate that as a patch? http://drupal.org/diffandpatch

Thanks!

csevb10’s picture

csevb10 commented

I think that's reasonable as well, and calebtr, I'm trying to find some time to start modifying the bulk update so that it will no longer fail on large bulk updates, so keep checking back periodically in the pathauto issue queue.

greggles’s picture

greggles
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Primary language English
Location Denver, Colorado, USA
commented
Version: 4.7.x-1.x-dev » 5.x-1.x-dev
Component: Miscellaneous » Documentation
Category: support » task
Status: Active » Needs work

I'd like to get this text change into the next release (which I'm mentally committing to early march).

How about:

README:
"Note: Bulk Updates may not work if your site has a large number of items to alias and/or if your server is particularly slow. If you are concerned about this problem you should backup your database (particularly the url_alias table) prior to executing the Bulk Update. If you are interested in helping speed up this operation look at the Pathauto issue queue - http://drupal.org/project/issues/pathauto - and specifically at the issues http://drupal.org/node/76172 and http://drupal.org/node/67665 You can help provide ideas, code, and testing in those issues to make pathauto better."

Pathauto Admin Settings:
"Note: Bulk Update may not complete on large or slow sites. See the README.txt for more information."

I'm setting to "code needs work" because it's just a documentation change so a patch is trivial once we have agreed on the wording.

csevb10’s picture

csevb10 commented

I think that's reasonable, and when I have more time we can look for a full solution to the underlying issues.

greggles’s picture

greggles
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Primary language English
Location Denver, Colorado, USA
commented
Title: bulk updates don't take anymore » warn users that bulk updates may not complete for lots of aliases

changing title

greggles’s picture

greggles
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Primary language English
Location Denver, Colorado, USA
commented
Status: Needs work » Fixed

Ok - committed to 5--2.x

Anonymous’s picture

(not verified) commented
Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)