Hi, I'm in a forum and they want to switch to phpBB since they think it's the database in IPB causing the problem. One of the problems is using the PMs. When one tries to send a PM, they get this message:
Is this database related?

Any simple fix for this? Otherwise, they might abandon this forums database after a short while and start fresh with phpBB.

Thanks.

I don't think so - this looks like a server problem.. See this part of the message:
Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 54784 bytes) in /var/www/sp/ -- the required memory allocation cannot be perform...

.../sources/classes/class_display.php on line 313 --> This code is trying to request that much memory allocation in order to be able to process and send the PM.

I haven't met this error earlier on - but most likely something's wrong with the server..filled up disk space and/or low RAM - so the required paging isn't happening. If they own the server - tell them to try clear up /var/log and see if this works.

Thanks m^e. I will ask them to try that out

They have switched hosts before and it seems to be a problem with each of them...haven't really kept track of the errors before, but now they want to leave the forum, so I hope there is a way to fix this up.

Are they using some cracked copy??? That might explain - some sort of code alternation cascading to this.

I've used several versions of IPB now here at Astahost and elsewhere.. the original paid copies and never had a single problem - specially with the unmodded code straight out of Invision's box.

I doubt it's a cracked copy. This forum has been around for years and I'm sure it's a legit one. Don't want to mention the site name, but if needed, I can post it.

One of the admins there did say that IPB might be conflicting with their RSS feeds they have. Not sure if that can be related to the errors or not.

That could either mean the boards server is struggling to have enough memory free to be used. If not, IPB is trying to use far too much and hence the php module gives up and errors out to you. Usually its when your asking it to do far too much, too much data to handle with not enough server power behind you.