Sunday, February 24th?

Aden · Post by **Aden** » January 24th, 2008, 1:10 pm

Has anyone else noticed that all of our posts today are showing as having been done on Sunday, Feb. 24??? BUT it's not... As far as I can telll, this is Thursday, January 24. What gives?

Mo Daviau · Post by **Mo Daviau** » January 24th, 2008, 1:15 pm

Bob reset the server this morning. I'll let him know.

Aden · Post by **Aden** » January 24th, 2008, 1:29 pm

Thanks MO

all is clear now.

vine311 · Post by **vine311** » January 24th, 2008, 2:59 pm

Something is not right. When I click on the "new posts" link up top it tells me I can't do a search so soon after my last even if I haven't done any searches at all. Also, when I read a message it is not marked as being "read" at all. It just stays that orange "unread" color. Staring at me...mocking me...urge to kill...rising.

Post by **admin** » January 24th, 2008, 11:18 pm

Ok, here's the story as I understand it:

I updated all my systems today and rebooted everything. The only problem I noticed was that the system clock was off by a month. No big deal - sync the system with a known-good time source, then start the program that sits in the background to keep time synced.

That can cause some issues especially if you're setting the clock back.

That will cause issues if your popular (but badly written) forum software subtracts the time of a user's last post from the current time to judge whether a user is flooding the forums. If that time difference is negative, something is wrong, and it's not because the user is doing anything evil.

Once Sherman and Mr. Peabody fire up the Wayback Machine and reset the system clock, the forum database has already stored the time of their last post and will prevent them from posting for (in this case) a month. Crap.

The fix is to stick a coathanger into the database and wiggle it around until the busticated post dates are set to something reasonable. For future reference, that fix is:

Code: Select all

UPDATE phpbb2_posts SET post_time = UNIX_TIMESTAMP(SUBDATE(FROM_UNIXTIME(post_time), INTERVAL 1 MONTH)) WHERE FROM_UNIXTIME(post_time) > '2008-01-25';

Things should be less retarded now, or, more accurately, roughly as retarded as normal.

Thanks for your patience,

Mr. Server Person

Jessica · Post by **Jessica** » January 25th, 2008, 8:03 am

I'm still being told I can't make a new search that quickly. Is there anything I can do directly? Where would I put that bit of code?

Thanks,
Jessica

PS - bob you are awesome for keeping this up and running!

Marc Majcher · Post by **Marc Majcher** » January 25th, 2008, 2:43 pm

admin wrote:

Code: Select all

UPDATE phpbb2_posts SET post_time = UNIX_TIMESTAMP(SUBDATE(FROM_UNIXTIME(post_time), INTERVAL 1 MONTH)) WHERE FROM_UNIXTIME(post_time) > '2008-01-25';

That's your suggestion for our next scene.

sara farr · Post by **sara farr** » January 25th, 2008, 5:29 pm

Is this fixed??? Do we log off and then log back on??

Post by **admin** » January 28th, 2008, 12:29 am

Most of it should be fixed. I had to reset the time fields in a couple of tables (sessions, search results, topics, etc.) to convince the software that nobody's flooding the systems with searches.

It just goes to show you how important accurate time is to computers.

Also I found the reason for the original problem - somehow the hardware clock was set a month in advance. No idea why, but it's fixed now.

Jessica · Post by **Jessica** » January 28th, 2008, 9:06 am

Yea, Bob! I could do a search for new posts this AM and I feel so much better!

Jessica

slappywhite · Post by **slappywhite** » January 28th, 2008, 10:00 am

My RSS feed is still all screwy, it's only showing the same 4 posts, i'm guessing thats because the timestamps on those 4 posts are in the future? Anyone else having this issue? (does anyone but me use the RSS feed?)