Time related problems.. please help...

[DJRoppolo]

All of a sudden, I am having some very strange occurances with my site. Here is a rundown of the things that are happening. Keep in mind, that before these started, I had not modified a single file for at least a month, which includes any hacks, style updates, etc:

1. Out of nowhere, at different times of the day, the 'Currently Online' list, will just randomly change from 30 or 40, to like 2 or 3, or sometimes 0. This only happens for a short time. A few minutes later, its back to normal.

2. Lots of people are getting the 'flood check/ minimum time between post' message, when they haven't even put up a post within the last hour or day.

3. Some posts which were posted AFTER a particular post in a thread, are showing up BEFORE the post that they were quoting.

4. If someone clicks on 'Recent Posts' and reads one or 2 posts, then clicks it again after only a few seconds/minutes, it marks all the recent posts to 'Read', and returns 0 posts.

5. With no interaction to my UCP, sometimes my personal time setting shows to be an hour off, either way, but only for a short time. A few minutes later, my personal time is back to normal.

As previously stated, I haven't edited a single php file in a month at least. These incidents started occuring all at the same time. I will mention however, that I have yet to upgrade to the latest version, which may or may not fix these glitches, but I'm still wondering if someone can help me figure out what this could be. Hopefully these clues will narrow it down. Thanks in advance.

[Wayne Luke]

Have you reinstalled the original vBulletin files to make sure that the problem doesn't occur anymore?

[DJRoppolo]

Originally posted by wluke
Have you reinstalled the original vBulletin files to make sure that the problem doesn't occur anymore?

No, i am just about to upgrade to the newest version, however, i'd like to see if i could get some insight as to what the problem may be in this case.

[Wayne Luke]

I haven't noticed any problems like this on any vBulletin that I visit regularly (about 10) or admin/support (3 counting this one). Due to the fact that you have modified your vBulletin files, whether a month ago or yesterday doesn't matter, we cannot begin to diagnose where the problem could be. Only be reverting to an approved release and verifying that the problem still exists can we help you.

[Guichi]

im having this same exact problem with my forums, i have used clean files two times and 1 fresh database already with no luck.

[Steve Machol]

Originally posted by Guichi
im having this same exact problem with my forums, i have used clean files two times and 1 fresh database already with no luck.

Rather than piggyback off an existing thread, please post a new thread with all the relevant info: vB version, PHP and MySQL versions, URL to yuor forums, whether you've installed and hacks, any and all error messages, etc.

[Guichi]

Originally posted by smachol
Rather than piggyback off an existing thread, please post a new thread with all the relevant info: vB version, PHP and MySQL versions, URL to yuor forums, whether you've installed and hacks, any and all error messages, etc.

i know the topic is a few days old but i was only trying get some more information on something that is obviously happening with more than one person. i see many other users do the same almost every day. then again this usually happends to me here.

[sim]

Re: Time related problems.. please help...

Originally posted by NSeXcellent
All of a sudden, I am having some very strange occurances with my site. Here is a rundown of the things that are happening.

2. Lots of people are getting the 'flood check/ minimum time between post' message, when they haven't even put up a post within the last hour or day.

3. Some posts which were posted AFTER a particular post in a thread, are showing up BEFORE the post that they were quoting.

5. With no interaction to my UCP, sometimes my personal time setting shows to be an hour off, either way, but only for a short time. A few minutes later, my personal time is back to normal.

Did anyone ever work out why this was happening ?

I am seeing similar results. We have a test site where this is happening. We haven't gone live with our vBulletin site quite yet - still sorting out the last of the details. These issues are causing a bit of alarm amongst our test users.

I believe item 3 and 5 above are connected... I am seeing (at random times) my local time jump forward by an hour. This is causing replies to posts I make during this time to be out of order.

Interestingly enough, I have also seen this behaviour on the vbulletin.org site too !

I was getting the flood check problem, but I simply disabled flood checking to get around that - not exactly ideal.

Any suggestions ?

[Steve Machol]

I'm not seeing any of these problems at vbulletin.org. Can you provide a link to a thread that has this problem?

The time settings are all taken from the server. There is no way that vBulletin can change the server's time. If the time is changing like this then it's a server issue and you'll need to contact your host about it.

[sim]

Originally posted by Steve Machol
I'm not seeing any of these problems at vbulletin.org. Can you provide a link to a thread that has this problem?

The time settings are all taken from the server. There is no way that vBulletin can change the server's time. If the time is changing like this then it's a server issue and you'll need to contact your host about it.

Well that's exactly where things get tricky... it seems to be a random thing ! I can't point you to a particular "thread" or anything to reproduce the problem

Hmm... okay - I just rechecked with the vbulletin.org forums, then the vbulletin.com and even some other vbulletin based forums I know of... they are all one hour out ! Even "GMT" on a forum I am not registered for is out.

I'm not seeing a DST thing here with these forums am I ? Is it currently DST in some parts of the US ?

Do people put their servers forward an hour in the US or set the vBulletin server time to their local timezone + 1 hour for DST or something ? This would explain why the time is out for me.

Okay... so if this explains the vbulletin.org and vbulletin.com sites, then scratch my comments in my earlier post about seeing my problem on those forums too.

But it does not explain what I am seeing on our test server.

If no-one has any more suggestions at this point, I will do some more research and see if I can tie it down some more or see any patterns in the problem. I will also check with the host to make sure that no-one has been adjusting the server time on us !

Thanks.

[Steve Machol]

DST is currently active in most of the US (except AZ and HI, I think.)

[sim]

Is it standard practice for people to adjust their vbulletin timezone for DST ? I would have thought that the board should stay as it was and all the users adjust their times, particularly when there are likely to be participants from other parts of the world on the boards.

Not criticising, just trying to work out how other people run their boards !

[Paul]

The DST thing is a known issue with vBulletin 2.x. See the hack I created over on vBulletin.org or wait for vB3 to come out, which supposedly does a better job.

Paul

[Steve Machol]

My server automatically adjusts itself for DST and takes vB along with it. The only time this is an issue is for my members (like me!) who are in non-DST areas. For instance since I'm in Arizona and we do not observer daylight savings time, I have to change my timezone in the User CP whenever DST changes.

[sim]

Originally posted by Steve Machol
My server automatically adjusts itself for DST and takes vB along with it.

Okay - makes sense, and would explain why I'm seeing the wrong times on those US based servers. Cool.

Now all I have to do is work out why I'm having problems - I'll let you know if I find anything interesting.

Thanks.