From what I read about the way vBulletin generally runs things, a half-hour is the normal default time it takes for the server to decide you’re idle and note you as logged out (“remember me” just means that your browser will log you in automatically)
So, depending on how the admins have the boards set, articles getting marked as read after a half hour or so of being idle is probably not unexpected behavior.
As for the more unexpected cases of everything marked as read, I wonder if we may actually be in a load-balancer situation with multiple physical servers–where lots of us experience issues when the boards are having real performance issues, and perhaps you have issues more often if something is going on from your ISP that confuses the load balancer session maintenance (like, say, if your ISP is changing your outgoing NAT address frequently or something like that).
Usually I seem to be logged out and then in again automatically within a minute or two of first logging in. That’s the problem I keep having. Sort of a hiccup in the system.
We do know from previous experiments that at least just prior to the worst of the last set of problems, refreshing the page could fix the session sometimes. If I was zapped, I could refresh a few times, checking the last visited time on each reload. After a few tries, I would get a proper timestamp, and then I’d go on with my browsing.
ETA: **madrabbitwoman **mentioned this in post 80, but it may have been lost in the sea of unknowns.
See? Like right now, I just logged on at 2:18pm, and it said my last visit was 2:18pm. It’s zapped everything that was Unread from my actual last visit, which was about 11:30am, and rendered it Read. The hiccup is growing worse.
It seems there have been more posts with growing frequency in this thread, in recent weeks.
In a separate thread about two weeks ago, I complained (again) that I was having intermittent difficulty logging in. As with previous similar complaints, everyone was quick to assume that it must just be my browser or my OS or my strange habits w.r.t cookies (wipe them regularly) or JavaScript (keeping it disabled). But we see a few similar complaints in this thread from other people.
At this point, I haven’t had such problems for a week or so. But I do note: The times I’ve noticed more frequent problems logging, often seem to coincide, more or less, with the times other people are noting various complaints in this thread. So I really don’t think it’s just a problem on my end here. I suspect the board indexes, or some such, are getting corrupted again, and maybe about ready for their semi-annual rebuild.
From my own experience working with database applications, we’ve found that rebuilding indexes is always the first and most likely best knee-jerk response to all customer complaints, big and small. That always seemed to resolve 90% of problems with our product. (Our running in-house joke was that the first knee-jerk response to all customer complaints was always FDISK!)
Does refreshing the page a few times help at all, Siam Sam? Maybe we can start collecting some data to see if the server balance theory actually pans out.
I expect these two items to go hand in hand, both based on when the system thinks your last activity was.
Ok then…I guess that pretty much rules out that as the sole cause, at least.
I wish we had an option to set our own last visited time…although I suspect that could cause other issues.
This may be related. I just clicked on New Posts, and it told me I had to wait … 120 seconds until I could do that. I’m certain I did not double-click, and this happens occasionally.
And I still occasionally get one of these when clicking on a link, like happened just now, a screen that says:
**Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, sysadmin-straightdope@desert.net and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/2 Server at boards.straightdope.com Port 80**
In case it matters, I’m on a regular PC accessing the Internet via Mozilla Firefox 26.0.
I’m so over coming to this board for the first time in 12 or 14 hours to be told by the board that I last logged in half an hour ago. Naturally, this means that all the threads are ‘read’ and none of the ‘go to new post’ links will work because, hey, there are NO new posts. Bloody annoying.
I just logged in for the first time in about 36 hours, only to be told my last log in was now, and all threads marked as Read. This is getting tiresome. And of course, no New Posts. :mad:
