Forum maintenance

[br]

The 'board index' problem is back. It works at the top of the page, but if you are on 'Current Events' and want to jump to 'Things Not T&F' from the bottom of the page, you are directed to 'Current Events'.

[pjmorse]

The world is waiting for your report.

Nothing that time. Until there's more data, I'm temporarily assuming this was an caused by the wider issue (other parts of the site were serving 503 Service Unavailable errors briefly) and isn't an issue with the forum specifically.

[pjmorse]

The 'board index' problem is back. It works at the top of the page, but if you are on 'Current Events' and want to jump to 'Things Not T&F' from the bottom of the page, you are directed to 'Current Events'.

That one was never actually fixed. It's a bug with the theme; the top jump-box works fine, it's the bottom one that shows this behavior.

The jump box calls a script when you change that menu. The script says, "Go to the forum indicated in the menu with ID 'jumpbox'." The problem is, both menus have the ID "jumpbox", and so the script picks the first one. When you use the box on the bottom of the page, it triggers the script but reads the value from the wrong menu.

The simplest solution to this is to remove the bottom jumpbox. The more elegant solutions would either (a) change the value of the top box when the bottom box is changed, or (b) tell the script which menu to read when the script is triggered.

This is on my list (and obviously I've made it far enough to diagnose the problem) but the priority hasn't been high enough to push it to the top.

[EPelle]

Any way to avert "The forum you selected does not exist." message when windows re-opens?

[26mi235]

I have been having the same problem ["The forum you selected does not exist."] tonight.

[pjmorse]

Any way to avert "The forum you selected does not exist." message when windows re-opens?

Good question. What's the URL in your browser's address bar when that happens? I'd like to try to debug this if it's a regular occurrence.

[donley2]

I keep having to do the CAPTHCA image, when I try and login.

[LopenUupunut]

A while ago I got something like "my IP address has been permanently banned"... luckily I was pretty sure that was a glitch

[gh]

join the club!!!!!!!

I'm trying to get the IT department to unban ME!

[JRM]

join the club!!!!!!!

I'm trying to get the IT department to unban ME!

You had it coming...

I was also banned, but everything seems fine now, although I had to reset my password because it said there were too many attempts to login. Big phishing attack?

[gh]

EVERYBODY was banned (briefly, fortunately)

[26mi235]

Boy, I hate that sinking feeling I got when I got that message.

I had to log back in and go through the CAPTHCA thing because it said I exceeded login attempts.

[pjmorse]

Boy, I hate that sinking feeling I got when I got that message.

I had to log back in and go through the CAPTHCA thing because it said I exceeded login attempts.

I think everyone got the CAPTCHA when the ban was lifted. That is one gnarly CAPTCHA. I sometimes reload it a few times to get one I can actually read.

[Marlow]

join the club!!!!!!!
I'm trying to get the IT department to unban ME!

See??!! It's all fun and games till YOU are the one banned, huh?!

[Daisy]

Why not just unban everyone and see what happens? An Olympic year amnesty?

[Pego]

EVERYBODY was banned (briefly, fortunately)

I never got a "banned" notice. Now, am I a good special or a bad special ?

[gh]

the "notice" only came if you tried to log on.

[EPelle]

Any way to avert "The forum you selected does not exist." message when windows re-opens?

Good question. What's the URL in your browser's address bar when that happens? I'd like to try to debug this if it's a regular occurrence.

I'll provide a proper URL once it re-occurs. This tends to occur when I've re-opened the last open Chrome tabs (usually on the Current Event forum) following a boot or start-up from sleep.

[kuha]

EVERYBODY was banned (briefly, fortunately)

For 30 minutes, gh was the happiest man on the face of the earth!

[gktrack]

I think everyone got the CAPTCHA when the ban was lifted. That is one gnarly CAPTCHA. I sometimes reload it a few times to get one I can actually read.

I'm still getting the CAPTCHA at login... is there a way to avoid it? I changed passwords, but still got CAPTCHA at login.

[donley2]

I think everyone got the CAPTCHA when the ban was lifted. That is one gnarly CAPTCHA. I sometimes reload it a few times to get one I can actually read.

I'm still getting the CAPTCHA at login... is there to avoid it? I changed passwords, but still got CAPTCHA at login.

Me too.

[pjmorse]

I'm still getting the CAPTCHA at login... is there to avoid it? I changed passwords, but still got CAPTCHA at login.

Me too.

I've done two things now. One is to boost the number of wrong passwords or other goofs you need in order to trigger the challenge; it was three, now it's ten. (I don't think many or any of us were actually hitting the "three" so I don't know if this step will actually help.) Second is to replace the gnarly unreadable CAPTCHA with a simple question-and-answer which will ask you one of a few easy questions. There is an option to set up reCAPTCHA, which is a widely-used CAPTCHA service provided by Google which I used to recommend in these cases, but I've seen some disturbingly difficult reCAPTCHAs in recent weeks so I'm no longer convinced it's the best option.

(The idea here is to prevent spam-spewing scripts from auto-registering and clogging the boards with junk. The current "state of the art" has accepted that it shouldn't be the user's job (i.e. your job) to prove you're not evil, and so the trend is away from this sort of challenge-response and towards significantly less visible ways of tricking the scripts into revealing themselves. However, there is a lot of "legacy code" in the form of plugins to applications like phpBB which make the old way easy; until the legacy code catches up, here we are.)

[26mi235]

When I post now I get a long delay and then it comes back with my post and says a new post has been logged -- but it is just my post.

I am also getting a 1000 character limit -- am I posting too much?

[pjmorse]

When I post now I get a long delay and then it comes back with my post and says a new post has been logged -- but it is just my post.

OK, I'm not quite sure what this means. By "when I post now," do you mean this happens every time you post a reply or create a new thread? And when you say "it is just my post," does that mean you are taken to a page which only shows your post? Or are you getting notification of new traffic on the thread (e.g. an email) which only reflects your post, not new activity by someone else? (If that is the case - do you get notification of others' activity, or just your own?)

I am also getting a 1000 character limit -- am I posting too much?

This is a new one on me. Is this on replies, or everywhere? Or do you just have a really, really secure password?

[pakillo]

maybe it's a moment for updating the time

[26mi235]

When I post a Reply it takes a long time with the computer giving me a little thing that circles around on the tab. Then, it comes up with the screen that only shows up when someone has posted in the interval between when you select to post a Reply and when you submit the Reply. However, rather than being a reply someone else has made in the interim, it is my own reply. If I select to post it at this point it generates a duplicate Reply.

I have not started a New Thread since this issue arose.

I had never seen the 1000-character limit before.

[I just posted a reply that hit the 100-character limit but not the double Reply issue.]

[pjmorse]

When I post a Reply it takes a long time with the computer giving me a little thing that circles around on the tab. Then, it comes up with the screen that only shows up when someone has posted in the interval between when you select to post a Reply and when you submit the Reply. However, rather than being a reply someone else has made in the interim, it is my own reply. If I select to post it at this point it generates a duplicate Reply.

I see. That is a good description, thanks. I'll see if I can duplicate it and debug.

I had never seen the 1000-character limit before.

[I just posted a reply that hit the 100-character limit but not the double Reply issue.]

I haven't seen it before either. I just generated a bunch of lorem ipsum and stuffed it at the bottom of this post and raised the same error. I'll see if I can lift that; 1000 characters is too few.

[26mi235]

The long wait when posting has either disappeared or greatly diminished this morning.

[pjmorse]

The long wait when posting has either disappeared or greatly diminished this morning.

Good! I made some configuration tweaks to the cache this morning with some other, more drastic errors in mind, and this may have been a secondary benefit.

I would explain in detail but I suspect it would run around 10,000 characters.

[lapsus]

Should I worry about "Guru Meditation" error message when posting? It seems the post went through anyway.

I didn't copy-paste the Guru Meditation ID since I had my post text saved in the copy-paste buffer and though I'd have to start again.

But what are you running the forum backend on, anyway? An Amiga 500?

[pjmorse]

Should I worry about "Guru Meditation" error message when posting? It seems the post went through anyway.

Technically, no. It means the cache gave up waiting for Apache to respond; it's doesn't necessarily mean your post failed. This is the newer, more transient version of what GH used to call "glue mode."

But what are you running the forum backend on, anyway? An Amiga 500?

It feels like it sometimes, doesn't it? It's actually got serious wheels in terms of processor power; the problem (I think) is memory (RAM) which means, I think, that when it starts to swap things slow down a lot. We're working on that.

[fromage]

well.. when I press post reply it comes up immediately and I will see in a few seconds whether this is a post completed

[fromage]

goodness, thats great!!! dont change anything. How did you guys know it was me... fromage. I never had to post my username and password.

[lapsus]

Thanks for the explanation. No offense meant for your server hardware, I just had a flashback to old times - Amiga also had Guru Meditation errors

In other news, I seem to have the same problem that others have reported: an error message about exceeding the maximum number of connection attempts is currently coming on every login.

[pjmorse]

Thanks for the explanation. No offense meant for your server hardware, I just had a flashback to old times - Amiga also had Guru Meditation errors

Oh ah. I was not an Amiga guy, so I didn't catch the reference. The caching software is Varnish, so my guess is that someone on that team put the Amiga homage in their default error message. A blank "Guru Meditation" appears to mean a timeout; if there's a different error, Varnish sometimes puts debugging information there (for the guru to meditate on, apparently).

In other news, I seem to have the same problem that others have reported: an error message about exceeding the maximum number of connection attempts is currently coming on every login.

I'm getting that too. I've tried to turn it off in phpBB, and it didn't work, so I think the problem is deeper. I'm getting so I don't bother putting in my password on the first try because I know I'm going to get the challenge anyway.