Unable To Remove Assistance Panel

[gjhorne]

I have seen a range of posts regarding this problem for some time ranging from it is still happening to it is resolved.  I am using two instances of community v4.0d on CentOS 5.7 x86_64, with tomcat v6.28 for both the java container and as a proxy in front of a load balancer.  I use haproxy v1.4.1 to load balance against both instances.  Both instances have a primary store and share a replicated secondary store on an nfs mount.  This all runs a separate virtual servers.  This is a test rig as a proof of concept. Technically It is quit fast with low latency when I bomb it.  `there are just some nagging software issues.

From a user acceptance point of view, the large (screen dominating) assistance panel does not want to go away.  It may be related to the a fact that when you modify the dashboard, no currently configured dashlets show and if you added new dashlets they become accumulative with the existing (but not visible when editing).  There is also no way of removing dashlets when you get duplicates for a similar reason.  I have not tested this on a simple rig so my question is any body else having similar issues.  Are these of my own making.  I understand it is  fairly complex build but it is a POC.

Thanks
Graham

[gjhorne]

More of an update on what I have found. 

If I customise the site and choose a different site theme, it then lets me successfully remove the assistance panel (temporarily as I will explain).

When customising the site dashboard, no existing dashlets are shown in the columns when opened.  Even after subsequent modifications during the same session.  Dashlets can be added and column layout changes can be made, and these all display (even duplicates) when refreshed.  Modifications exist when sourcing from either sever in the cluster. I can alternatively switch to different servers using the load balancer to prove this point.  But after a complete restart with both servers taken down and then restart one server at a time, almost all layout changes are lost.  The dashboard layout goes back to the default of small plus large pair of columns and the default configured dashlets.  Even the assistance panel returns (the cat come coming back). The only change that persists is the theme.

So I can conclude (I think) that some form of caching IS working bidirectionally between the servers.
As changes only last the life cycle of an existing server staying alive, the changes are not persistently stored but only make it to cache.  The cache is then propagated from the existing to the newly started server keeping them alive.

So my question is -  Where are the dashboard changes persisted?  I assume in the database somewhere.  Which table.colums is used?  I suppose it is get down into the code but I was hoping someone else may have struck this.  By the way it is a postgresql-9 database.  I ant see any logging errors.   Maybe I will switch to debug before I open eclipse. on this.

Regards
Graham