[ic] Scarey -- Can Not Identify Error

interchange-users@lists.akopia.com interchange-users@lists.akopia.com
Thu May 10 10:19:00 2001


On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 09:52:44AM -0400, Christopher VanOosterhout wrote:
> 
> Greetings All,
> 
> I just had a customer inquiry about not getting an order shipped.  Sure 
> enough I had no record of getting the order or processing it.
> 
> The Interchange system did send him a confirmation so there was and order 
> number and I was able to find the following entry in the error log file:
> 
> 134.134.248.27 rcuwRkIH:134.134.248.27 - [19/April/2001:10:45:48 -0400] 
> universal /cgi-bin/universal/process 0
> 
> AND
> 
> The first line of the customer's order confirmation 
> said:  UNEXPECTED_DATA_AFTER_ADDRESS@.SYNTAX-ERROR
> 
> 
> Do you have any idea what may have happened to send a confirmation to the 
> customer but nothing to me as the store administrator, when I usually get a 
> copy of the orders?

I'd guess the garbage in the input created something that could not
be processed at some point down the line.


We filter everything to clean ASCII at various points.  Since we typically
print packing lists and invoices with TeX, now and then a printout will
silently die on some special combination of characters.  We add that combination
to our filter. But a simple null char in a form can kill it too.  Suppose you 
stack two addresses; mv will return them null delimited.  Depending on what 
you try to do with that you can kill your process/output/whatever.


> 
> This of course is a major concern ... since I hate the ideas that customers 
> are out there ordering products and not being serviced.

We don't use the minivend order email, but trigger a process
that looks in the database to send the confirmation so it **must** be
in hand before a confirmation goes out.  I'd expect the internal minivend
order email would work same way for same reasons.  Aren't you saying
that **you** did not get notification?  I'd bet you can find the order
in etc/something.  You just need some way of verifying that what goes
into your order stream is what comes out.  Like if you hand the shipping
clerk 50 outgoing orders you would expect some sort of handshake
confirming 50 (and the same 50) orders went out.  Did I write that
clearly?

cfm


> 
> Any assistance you can give me would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Christopher Van Oosterhout
> 
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-- 

Christopher F. Miller, Publisher                             cfm@maine.com
MaineStreet Communications, Inc         208 Portland Road, Gray, ME  04039
1.207.657.5078                                       http://www.maine.com/
Content management, electronic commerce, internet integration, Debian linux