The Board

Is it me or is the board been acting up lately ? Considering I have switched to Konqueror as my main browser (netscape just is too unstable for my taste) I am not sure if perhaps it is not related to this. The ghost attachments is one example which I attribute to be most likely Konquerors fault. But for some time also I am noticing that my read count is flakey. I then overnight suddenly get dozens of messages marked as unread yet even though I have read these mere hours ago and the read marks at that time acknowledged that by no longer showing them to me as new (you know, the number between ()'s for those that have logged in, denoting how many new threads in this section or how many new messages/replys when in the section view).

All things considered I am having trouble explaining how this could be the fault of my new browser choice since at one point they are all correct but then revert to some earlier point in time. Could this be in the maintenance run for WWWthreads I wonder ?

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue & Red - 080000431

I then overnight suddenly get dozens of messages marked as unread yet even though I have read these mere hours ago

Welcome to the read/unread bug. It started showing up around the time when the BBS switched from the perl to the php version of WWWthreads. It seems to only affect some users but no pattern has been found. The WWWthreads developer looked at the Empeg BBS for a few days but couldn't reproduce the bug, and that was quite a while ago. It seems that we are stuck with it.

Borislav

I have been having the same problems... I also use Konqueror as my main browser... Although I seem to remember having similar problems with the marking of unread posts with netscape before I gave it away...

My guess would be some sort of state information being kept in different threads of the BBS software / Web server getting out of sync...

Cheers

Kim

but no pattern has been found

The pattern I observe is:

- the read/unread posts start appearing in the afternoon, around 2 PM CET onwards. This is the time that readers in the US start to log on. Something to do with load?

- if I use the "shortcuts" or jumps to move around the board, it rapidly causes this bug to occur. If I use the up and sideways keys of the UI it doesn't seem to happen.

- if I remain logged in and repeatedly refresh the page to see if there are new posts, it happens. I can avoid this by going through "Who's Online" and then "Main Index" to do a refresh.

- If I am logged in, read all new posts and then move from the page to another URL, then move back to the empeg BBS (within say, 20 seconds), the problem occurs - ie. the posts I have just read are now marked as unread.

- If I log out, sometimes if I return to the page it indicates I am still logged in, even when I am connecting from the same machine.

- if I log out from work, I can connect again later from home to find I am still logged in. If I log out at home again and return to work, it is 50/50 as to whether I am still regarded as logged in or not.

To me it looks like there is a bug in how cookies are validated/invalidated; also there is something wrong with how they are interpreted against login state on the server; and then finally, the state recording of the server seems to have problems too. This is all observed on Netscape and Exploder.

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

This is all observed on Netscape and Exploder.

Haha, yet another verb to add to the Microshaft word list!

Edwin de Vaan
mk2 rev.7 Trillian # 080000263 6Gb blue/red