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livejournal import failing on error: XML-RPC Request Failed

  1. trackofalljades
    Member

    I'm trying to import all the entires/comments from my former Livejournal blog, and it keeps failing immediately with:

    XML-RPC Request Failed -- Server: couldn't retrieve anum for entry at /home/lj/cgi-bin/ljprotocol.pl line 3952

    I'm not sure how to proceed. I have many entries, so retrieving XML files of the whole blog would be extremely tedious as an alternative option (ten years of entries, and LJ only lets you export a month at a time).

    Because the error occurs immediately when I try to import, it sounds more like it might be something at this end rather than at Livejournal (where, I realize, things are very often slow and/or broken). It seems to me like this might actually be a problem at the WP end of things worth looking into. Can anyone help/advise? Thanks!

    The blog I need help with is trackofalljades.wordpress.com.

  2. trackofalljades
    Member

    I did a little more digging on this, and since I'm not familiar with RPC, I'm not entirely certain if this is a WP error or an LJ error being reported back to WP. In case it's coming from LJ, I looked up this file...

    http://code.livejournal.org/trac/livejournal/browser/trunk/cgi-bin/ljprotocol.pl#L3950

    ...and retrieved this code snippet from the line number mentioned:

    while (my ($id, $prop, $dt) = $sth->fetchrow_array) {<br /> my $entry = LJ::Entry->new($ownerid, jitemid => $id);<br /> if ($prop == $p_calter->{'id'}) {<br /> $cmt{$id} = [ 'C', $id, $dt, "update", $entry->anum ];<br /> } elsif ($prop == $p_revtime->{'id'}) {<br /> $item{$id} = [ 'L', $id, $dt, "update", $entry->anum ];<br /> }<br /> }

    Does that help anyone figure this out? I'm not familiar enough with either WP or LJ to know what's being passed around there...

  3. trackofalljades
    Member

    I've posted a ticket at Livejournal in case there's something that's been recently changed there to break the import functionality over here:

    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1364544

  4. nematome
    Member

    I am having this exact same issue.

  5. nematome
    Member

    Thanks, trackofalljades!

  6. thesacredpath
    Member

    You can also contact staff here to have them look into it at http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/ . Search for anything and then scroll down, click "no" and then the contact form will appear.

  7. trackofalljades
    Member

    It helps to know that others are experiencing the issue, that rules out anything odd about my specific journal. I was worrying that it might be some peculiarity of my having an uncommon LJ account type or having once used a rename token...I guess now it's just a matter of someone at LJ or WP correcting the issue.

    Hope this can get figured out soon, I'm pretty much stuck twiddling my thumbs until this works.

  8. trackofalljades
    Member

    thesacredpath, I just attempted to do that but the form which appeared did not appear to open a ticket. In fact, it posted what I typed into a new forum post under "Staff Questions" which wasn't my intent (oops).

  9. trackofalljades
    Member

    Okay, I can now verify that this is definitely something screwed up on the LJ end of things. The exact same error is being reported by ljdump (most recent version, 1.5.1) when I run it on the command line on my Snow Leopard machine:

    couldn't retrieve anum for entry at /home/lj/cgi-bin/ljprotocol.pl line 3952

    Therefore it doesn't appear there's anything to "fix" with WordPress at this time. I'll pursue getting this figured out on the LJ side...wish me luck. :P

  10. trackofalljades
    Member

    mematome, and anyone else who comes upon this thread trying to solve the same issue...you may want to check out this thread as well (not yet resolved, unfortunately):

    http://lj-dev.livejournal.com/843576.html

  11. trackofalljades
    Member

    In case anyone else comes across this thread while trying to import LJ content into WP, here's an update...further investigation reveals a number of issues among LJ users relating to their XML-RPC interface since the most recent code release over there. During the month of August, a growing number of LJ users have started reporting that their backup clients, exporting tools, etc. have completely stopped working because of unprecedented XML-RPC errors (including this one).

    In order to help, I've been trying to keep track of similar conversations, here are several more for your perusal:

    http://ljdump.livejournal.com/10002.html
    http://lj-releases.livejournal.com/68419.html?thread=5072707#t5072707
    http://news.livejournal.com/139294.html?thread=96710686#t96710686
    http://ljarchive.livejournal.com/81582.html
    http://asa-ru.livejournal.com/139794.html

    There are also now currently several support tickets open at LJ regarding these kinds of errors, here are those I've found so far:

    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1364544
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1366482
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1365486
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1366392

    If you are an LJ user who is currently having similar problems, I encourage you to open a support ticket of your own so that LJ properly understands the severity of the issue. Please be as descriptive as possible, and feel free to copy and paste links from here in order to verify that you are describing a widespread bug and not an isolated issue with third-party software (which LJ does not support). You can open a support ticket with LJ here:

    http://www.livejournal.com/support/submit.bml

  12. jarrellj1
    Member

    Having the same problem and have submitted a support ticket to LJ.

    Thanks for all the info!

  13. trackofalljades
    Member

    Thanks for your support ticket, the list is growing...

    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1364544
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1366482
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1365486
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1366392
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1367712
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1367286
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1367256
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1365248
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1368502
    http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1370198

    ...hopefully there will be another release soon. They seem to be overrun with stupid issues with their new rich text editor, and frankly I don't understand how that can be nearly as important as completely breaking XML-RPC for so many users (a majority of everyone I've contacted is now experiencing this, even some people who initially could back up successfully). Fortunately, I've heard back from support and apparently they've found a code change from a while back that they believe is causing this to happen. So now it's basically a waiting game.

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