Please help us help you and fill where relevant:
Your LimeSurvey version: 6.3.7
Own server or LimeSurvey hosting: Own
Survey theme/template: 
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Hello,

after i finished a survey i got this:

What's wrong?!?

Incorrect string value: '\xFA\xA6;\x93Wk...' for column 'error_message' at row 1

You have an incorrect string value...

Whatever that means.

When you say you "finished a survey", does this mean you completed answering on of your surveys or you completed "programming" a survey?

Also, you have posted this in the installation and update section. So do you feel this has to do with a recent update? How is this connected?

I mean completing answering.

If this is a update Issue?
Unfortunately not. I have gone back on a trial basis, but there is no improvement in sight.

The wrong value also changes every time. In any case, I can no longer complete a survey.

Normally I would be asked whether the answers should be printed out. This does not appear, but this error message.

Own hosting ?

Can you activate debug mode www.limesurvey.org/manual/Debug_mode ?
If you export and import this survey : do you have same issue with the new one ?

Normally I would be asked whether the answers should be printed out. This does not appear, but this error message.

This might be an interesting path to follow. So you ask them whether they want to print or not. How do you do that? Is there any custom script used?

Has there been any update/upgrade on the server itself (not Limesurvey)? Maybe some function that was there before and is now missing?

Also a good idea of what Denis suggested. Try to copy the survey and see what happens.

The error has been found.

But it's the most confusing and worst error message I've ever seen.
Please change this, it has cost me useless time just looking in the wrong place.

Cause: PHP-Mailer could not deliver emails. The TLS certificate of the mail server had changed.

I only got the idea because the following message was displayed in the debug:
This made me realize that the server error only occurs if an email is to be sent at the end.

Horribly misleading. And I have already looked at PHP itself and the MySQL connection on the server...

Can you report the issue please?

About the TLS certificate , if needed : gitlab.com/SondagesPro/coreAndTools/AllowSelfSignedSSLSmtp
You can report the issue too : i'm happy to move this plugin to core.

Sorry for this, but I don't have time to support a bug report.

If you want to report it, I'll leave you the two screenshots of the incident

 
 

seppel wrote:

Sorry for this, but I don't have time to support a bug report.
 

LOL !

OK, don't have time to fix issue then …

10 minutes to report VS 2 hours to fix …

seppel wrote:

If you want to report it, I'll leave you the two screenshots of the incident
 

You kidding ?
Right ?

You're asking if I can report it?

I say no, because I know what an effort it is to report a bug. 

But I'll also give you the opportunity to do it yourself if it's important.

And now I'm not allowed to say no without being held accountable?

Who's kidding who here...

Please close this topic 

I say no, because I know what an effort it is to report a bug. 

You know? Really?
As far as I saw you never filed a LimeSurvey bug report so far.

But if it's too time-consuming for you to fill out this form with 6 mandatory questions...
 

You see, we do this work voluntarily in our free time.

And I do not see an issue here in 6.3.8.
 
 

Joffm

Sorry for this, but I don't have time to support a bug report.

This is quite a sad approach to supporting a open source project that you and your company seem to benefit from.

I don't see how filling the bug report form of Limesurvey can take you so long. It would probably have been quicker to report the bug than to write your post in the forum.

And it totally makes sense that the person that actually encounters the bug makes the bug report, not a third person based on what is written in the forum (e.g. if there are further questions from the developers).

I am not surprised when volunteer developers like Denis just say "no", because I know that it is a lot of work they put into this software.

You have the right to not report the report. But don't be surprised when the volunteers are not too happy about it.

We all have stuff to do in our life. I get it. But a bug report will take you maybe 5 minutes of your time. If you are a bit slow (or very, very detailed), maybe 10-15 Minutes. I don't think that is too much to give back to a software you can basically run for free. If everyone would have this attitude Limesurvey would be no where near its current state. So all Denis was asking you to take 5 minutes of your time to create a bug report. Surely fixing the bug will take Denis and other volunteer developers a lot more than 5-10 minutes.

As I said: No one can and will force you to create the bug report. This is totally up to you and it is voluntary. It is just sad to see this type of attitude in a volunteer run forum.

seppel wrote:

Please change this, it has cost me useless time just looking in the wrong place.

 

The reason why you kidding.

Character encoding issue in your database. It occurs when trying to store characters in the error message column that are not supported by the databases current encoding.