Thread

Hi there,

A moment ago it looks like as if the Forum module went crazy or something. A few registered users have posted messages but they have been marked as 8am instead of 4pm (current time in the UK).

An example would be the first post of this page.

http://psnow.es/index.php/foro/viewthread/337/P125/

The user has quoted another user that posted at 3:12PM, but his message went way up the thread as if he posted at 08:33AM, when he only posted a few minutes ago.

Using EE 1.6.9 Build 20100430 and Discussion Module 2.1.2.

Perhaps a server hickup/reboot?
Check the time on the server itself:
CP Home ›  Admin ›  Utilities ›  PHP Info
then on the EE
CP Home ›  Admin ›  System Preferences ›  Localization Settings

is it happening to all users or just a few?new users?

this will give staff at least some starting point when they do get to the thread.

Hi lebisol,

It’s happening again, to all users. I looked at the server info and this is what I got:

Linux n24 2.6.33.1mtv1 #3 SMP Mon Mar 15 15:31:59 PDT 2010 i686

Is it me or does that say Monday 15th of March? Anyway, the time is 15:31 PDT, which is weird because AFAIK it’s 11:28 PDT at the moment.

On the Localization Settings of the CP I have UTC+2. Not sure if that’s correct… :S But the thing is that on the forum everything was fine, with the correct times and everything until today when users’ posts started going bonkers.

Not sure if it’s a server problem. I’ll send a ticket to MediaTemple to see if there’s any issues.

Yes, I’d suspect a server problem as well. Let us know when you hear back from support, please.

Well, this is the response I got:

I checked the date stamps on all the nodes on your cluster and they appear to be correct.  I believe all of the server times are going to be set to PST.  The time you see in the system line in ‘phpinfo()’ is based on when the kernel was compiled, and is not the current time (or else reloading that info page would show an incrementing time).

If you’re using third party software, there’s generally an option to set the timezone of the server so it knows how to properly display the time in different timezones.  Make sure you have this set correctly if it is an option.

If you have any further questions regarding your (mt) Media Temple services, please feel free to contact us at any time.

So, yeah… as always, they say the problem is not on their side. I just don’t know why on earth everything was going fine for the last couple of years, and all of a sudden new posts get wrong times.

Since the server is PST I’ve set the Server Time Zone to UTC-7 on the EE Control Panel. Not sure what else to do.

This is a recent problem, correct? Meaning it’s been working correctly before? If so, something must have changed. If you didn’t do anything with your EE setup it might be something server related, a new version of some software, a configuration change, anything like that.

Does this only affect the forum? Do your regular weblog post come out with the correct date?

Yeah, I’ve had the forum running for a couple of years and everything was perfect, although we were only a dozen users posting. Since the beginning of this month I’m getting tons of users signing up and posting on the forum (looks like I won the lottery somewhere) and on the 9th is when I was getting reports of it happening.

For example: http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/3420/falloforo.jpg

The post on top was sent as a reply to another post, but because the time got changed it moved way up the thread, on top of a previous post. Really weird.

Another example is this user. He registered on the 9th at 2:58PM but this post was published as the 9th at 09:05AM: http://psnow.es/index.php/foro/viewthread/421/

This has only happened to a few users, not all (hasen’t happened to me, for example). I’ve been posting entries on the weblog module but I haven’t noticed anything strange happening there. Yesterday I changed the Server Time Zone from UTC+2 to UTC-7, so maybe that solve’s the problem.

I’ve asked them to notify me if it happens again, but no feedback as of yet, so… I’ll wait and see.

I haven’t made any major changes to the settings, just edited a few templates of the frontend and that’s it. Everything else is the same.

I don’t see how this can be anything but a server issue, especially since it’s been working fine until recently. It’s certainly the first time I’ve experienced the issue. This only happens ont he forums, right? Your regular entries are date correctly? Do you have access to the server, ie can you determine the current server time?

Yeah, I’ve checked weblog entries and all the times are correct, although I haven’t really published anything during the times that the users have been reporting errors, so it’s a bit hard to be certain.

I’m using (gs) GridServer with (mt) MediaTemple, so I don’t have access to the server. If I use {current_time} it says it’s 7:02AM at the moment (when I’m logged out, of course).

Edit: The guy over at (mt) created a script for me to see the time. He also said:

“Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything that may have happened since the 9th that may have caused this issue.”

UTC-7 should be right.. Did you get any email messages from MT around that time?

Nope. But anyway… it hasn’t happened again since then, so hopefully the problem has gone, whatever it was.

Thanks for your assistance anyway. You can mark as solved. 😉

Probably just a burp. 😊 Don’t hesitate to post again as needed.