Server Maintenance on the 26th: Docs, Forums, Wiki

[Bryan Petty]

The wxWidgets docs, forums, and wiki will be down intermittently for
an hour or two tomorrow while I perform some major upgrades on the
server. I don't have a specific time in mind, just when I'm able to
during lower traffic.

I've already tested the upgrades on a new server to confirm most of it
works, update configuration files, and upgrade phpBB on the forums. I
will be using those files from that work to minimize the amount of
time the actual server is down while I repeat this process on the
actual server tomorrow, but the upgrade involves 3 major OS upgrades,
reboots for each, and time to replace files.

This is part of the effort to fix the issues many users have been
having with sessions on the forums. I can't confirm if this upgrade
actually fixes it, but I can say that my own login appears to work
fine after the upgrade (it has worked on the current server most of
the time too though). Time will tell if this resolves the issue.

I'd delay these upgrades to give everyone more time notice, but the
forum issue seems to be extra painful for people recently, so I don't
want to wait for another weekend.

--
Regards,
Bryan Petty

[Bryan Petty]

Upgrades are now complete, and docs, wiki, and forums are all back online.

Known Issues:
- Doxygen search appears to be incompatible with PHP 7.4, and is now
broken, so this will be one more reason to push ahead with Doxygen
upgrades (as I'm sure newer PHP-powered search is compatible). You can
use wxWidgets site search instead, or Google directly as a workaround
for now:
- http://www.wxwidgets.org/search/?q=wxlistctrl
- https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adocs.wxwidgets.org+wxlistctrl

If you run into any other issues, please let me know. Please also let
me know if it appears like the forum session issues appear to be
fixed.

--
Regards,
Bryan Petty

[Igor Korot]

Hi, Bryan,

On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 1:30 PM Bryan Petty <br...@ibaku.net> wrote:
>
> Upgrades are now complete, and docs, wiki, and forums are all back online.

Thank you for doing the upgrade.

What I noticed is the following:

I retype the URL for the forum in my FF and the board shown.
I logged in (without any issues) and I got one message in my queue (not PM.

I went to that thread and I clicked on the "Reply" button.

At this point I was kicked out and had to re-login in order to post the reply.

After that I wanted to browse the forum, like I usually do. ;-)
But I was again kicked out after clicking on "C++ development".

I didn't select "Keep me logged in".

So something changed in terms of the login timeout.

I didn't check anything else.

Thank you.

>
> Known Issues:
> - Doxygen search appears to be incompatible with PHP 7.4, and is now
> broken, so this will be one more reason to push ahead with Doxygen
> upgrades (as I'm sure newer PHP-powered search is compatible). You can
> use wxWidgets site search instead, or Google directly as a workaround
> for now:
> - http://www.wxwidgets.org/search/?q=wxlistctrl
> - https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adocs.wxwidgets.org+wxlistctrl
>
> If you run into any other issues, please let me know. Please also let
> me know if it appears like the forum session issues appear to be
> fixed.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Bryan Petty
>

> --
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[Igor Korot]

Bryan,

On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 1:53 PM Igor Korot <ikor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi, Bryan,
>
> On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 1:30 PM Bryan Petty <br...@ibaku.net> wrote:
> >
> > Upgrades are now complete, and docs, wiki, and forums are all back online.
>
> Thank you for doing the upgrade.
>
> What I noticed is the following:
>
> I retype the URL for the forum in my FF and the board shown.
> I logged in (without any issues) and I got one message in my queue (not PM.
>
> I went to that thread and I clicked on the "Reply" button.
>
> At this point I was kicked out and had to re-login in order to post the reply.
>
> After that I wanted to browse the forum, like I usually do. ;-)
> But I was again kicked out after clicking on "C++ development".
>
> I didn't select "Keep me logged in".
>
> So something changed in terms of the login timeout.
>
> I didn't check anything else.
>
> Thank you.

In addition - I logged in again and I see another oddity.

Usually the threads that have some posting are marked with red dot.
However I don't see that now.
Entering the thread that I know have new posting have the red dot marking
But this marking is not present in the subforum board thread.

Thank you.

P.S.:: All this is on Windows with FF 92.0 64-bit.

[Eric Jensen]

Hello Bryan,

Sunday, September 26, 2021, 8:30:13 PM, you wrote:

BP> Upgrades are now complete, and docs, wiki, and forums are all back online.

BP> Known Issues:
BP> - Doxygen search appears to be incompatible with PHP 7.4, and is now
BP> broken, so this will be one more reason to push ahead with Doxygen
BP> upgrades (as I'm sure newer PHP-powered search is compatible). You can
BP> use wxWidgets site search instead, or Google directly as a workaround
BP> for now:
BP> - http://www.wxwidgets.org/search/?q=wxlistctrl
BP> -
BP> https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adocs.wxwidgets.org+wxlistctrl

BP> If you run into any other issues, please let me know. Please also let
BP> me know if it appears like the forum session issues appear to be
BP> fixed.

Thanks for the upgrade.

Unfortunately i can't login at all. Getting the following error in the
login screen:

"The submitted form was invalid. Try submitting again."
This is a different behavior than the "old" error.

I did try clearing cache and cookies etc. without success.

Eric

[Eric Jensen]

Hello Bryan,

Sunday, September 26, 2021, 10:10:45 PM, you wrote:

EJ> Hello Bryan,

EJ> Sunday, September 26, 2021, 8:30:13 PM, you wrote:

BP>> Upgrades are now complete, and docs, wiki, and forums are all back online.

BP>> Known Issues:
BP>> - Doxygen search appears to be incompatible with PHP 7.4, and is now
BP>> broken, so this will be one more reason to push ahead with Doxygen
BP>> upgrades (as I'm sure newer PHP-powered search is compatible). You can
BP>> use wxWidgets site search instead, or Google directly as a workaround
BP>> for now:
BP>> - http://www.wxwidgets.org/search/?q=wxlistctrl
BP>> -
BP>> https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adocs.wxwidgets.org+wxlistctrl

BP>> If you run into any other issues, please let me know. Please also let
BP>> me know if it appears like the forum session issues appear to be
BP>> fixed.

EJ> Thanks for the upgrade.

EJ> Unfortunately i can't login at all. Getting the following error in the
EJ> login screen:

EJ> "The submitted form was invalid. Try submitting again."
EJ> This is a different behavior than the "old" error.

EJ> I did try clearing cache and cookies etc. without success.

EJ> Eric
EJ>

I just managed to log in successfully.

I you changed anything since my last message, thanks.

If not, we may still have a login issue.

Eric




--

[Bryan Petty]

On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 2:36 PM Eric Jensen <m...@j-dev.de> wrote:
> I just managed to log in successfully.
>
> I you changed anything since my last message, thanks.
>
> If not, we may still have a login issue.

I forgot to mention that anyone hitting issues should also be sure to
delete all cookies for forums.wxwidgets.org, since they could have
incorrect settings from the previous version of phpBB.

There's a "Delete cookies" link at the bottom of all pages on the
forum, which does clear the login cookie, but misses some others. To
be extra sure, you can clear them from your browser directly:

In Chrome: Click the button next to the URL in the address bar, select
"Cookies", and remove all cookies.

--
Regards,
Bryan Petty

[Bryan Petty]

On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 12:57 PM Igor Korot <ikor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Usually the threads that have some posting are marked with red dot.
> However I don't see that now.
> Entering the thread that I know have new posting have the red dot marking
> But this marking is not present in the subforum board thread.

This might just simply be a UI change from phpBB upgrade. They made
some changes to the notification system in the latest release.

If that's the case, there's not much we can do about it, unless you
find there's some board settings to configure it.

--
Regards,
Bryan Petty

[Bryan Petty]

On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 10:52 PM Bryan Petty <br...@ibaku.net> wrote:
> This is part of the effort to fix the issues many users have been
> having with sessions on the forums. I can't confirm if this upgrade
> actually fixes it, but I can say that my own login appears to work
> fine after the upgrade (it has worked on the current server most of
> the time too though). Time will tell if this resolves the issue.

Alright folks, I think I've actually *really* fixed the login session issues.

My biggest hint was that when this happened, URLs generated on the
board would result in completely different `sid=` values, meaning
every request was creating a new session ID. I could see this
happening in these situations for weeks now, and knew it was part of
the problem. I just thought some phpBB code was triggering new
sessions somehow (and phpBB does do this in certain situations
normally). phpBB makes use of native PHP session IDs for these, and
ties form submissions on the site to those session IDs to prevent CSRF
attacks. Since session IDs change with every request, the site
considers all form submissions as potential attacks, and blocks them.
This is why you see "form is invalid" errors.

I finally took the time to re-evaluate the PHP session store
configuration on the server today though, and discovered it's been
trying to save PHP sessions on disk, in a path it doesn't have write
access to. I've reconfigured this to use the more performant in-memory
cache already running on the server, and I can verify that session IDs
are no longer changing per request on the site. To be honest, I didn't
suspect this would be part of the problem since it appeared to work
fine for many people for a long time, and even occasionally worked
fine for people that had seen the issue (after trying again later).

Anyway, you should no longer be seeing login/session problems now.

--
Regards,
Bryan Petty

[Eric Jensen]

Hello Bryan,

Monday, September 27, 2021, 5:51:32 PM, you wrote:

BP> I finally took the time to re-evaluate the PHP session store
BP> configuration on the server today though, and discovered it's been
BP> trying to save PHP sessions on disk, in a path it doesn't have write
BP> access to. I've reconfigured this to use the more performant in-memory
BP> cache already running on the server, and I can verify that session IDs
BP> are no longer changing per request on the site. To be honest, I didn't
BP> suspect this would be part of the problem since it appeared to work
BP> fine for many people for a long time, and even occasionally worked
BP> fine for people that had seen the issue (after trying again later).

BP> Anyway, you should no longer be seeing login/session problems now.

Sorry, but still having issues. And as there are currently only 4
users online, i'd say i'm not the only one. When the forum is working,
there are usually at least 30-50 users online.

Eric

[Bryan Petty]

Nevermind, it started changing on me again.

Well, I'm ready to pull my hair out over it, so I'm going to put this
down again for now.

--
Regards,
Bryan Petty

[Eric Jensen]

Hello Bryan,

Monday, September 27, 2021, 6:10:04 PM, you wrote:

BP> Nevermind, it started changing on me again.

BP> Well, I'm ready to pull my hair out over it, so I'm going to put this
BP> down again for now.

How about asking on the phpbb support forum?
https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewforum.php?f=661

It's very active and i'm sure they're happy to help. They usually
request a lot of information regarding server, installed modes,
settings, etc. which i can't answer. Otherwise i would have asked
there myself already.

Eric