Bug: Indexer not properly indexing photos (even when it eventually runs)

joshwisely

Problem description: When the indexer eventually runs (which now can lag behind by many days), some photos are left with incorrect meta-data. For example, a photo with a keyword doesn't show up in a smart gallery even after the indexer runs. Support had to manually re-index a photo/gallery a few times for the problems with a specific image to be resolved.

While that resolved the issues with that specific photo, my fear is that the indexer is randomly not working properly, but doesn't realize it so it never attempts to update/correct the keywords for a photo. As I use smart galleries based on keywords for almost everything I do, this scares me that photos are randomly getting lost.

How to reproduce: I don't know. Part of what I'd like to figure out is how many photos are affected by this and the root cause, but I can't do that on my own.

Links and supporting info: See case 545418. In that case I note the exact image in question. I'd rather not publish it for everyone to see.

What I'm looking for:
1) Figuring out how many photos affected by this?
2) How do I/we fix this for all photos?
3) How can this be prevented from happening again?

Note for support: This is also meant to allow other people to know about the problem. I've already worked with you via a email support case (545418) on resolving the specific image in question here and you've fixed the specific photo in question. However the questions about how many photos are affected, how to fix this for all photos, and how to prevent this from happening have not been addressed. I've asked these harder questions in my support case (via email) but all I hear are crickets or side-stepping of the question.

tomnovy

Josh,

I have just replied to your email - please check it.

Take care,

Tom
SmugMug Support Hero

joshwisely

Hi Tom,

Your answer can be summed up as:
1) There was a glitch.
2) We think it's only happened to this one photo, but have no proof either way.
3) Reproducing this problem is probably hard so we are going to wait for you to show us more examples before we'll investigate.

Part 3 is what I'm taking issue with. Are you seriously suggesting that there is no better way to find out if there are more photos affected by this than for me to review every one of my 50,635 photos to ensure they are indexed properly?! I understand reproducing problems is hard but, call me crazy, I think putting the burden on me to reproduce a problem in your system is unreasonable.

Please for give my snarkiness, but I hope you can understand my skepticism and frustration here.

I've sent you some suggestions via email.

joshwisely

Support has gotten back to me again. They are re-indexing my entire account. While this action has shown to fix the photo in question, it is still unknown what caused the problem so this may come back again.