Tracking new posts got bugged for me

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3139

I tend to browse forums via https://forums.gentoo.org/search.php?search_id=newposts
A few days ago I accidentally clicked on "mark all forums read" and I think since that moment tracking unread posts wasn't working very well for me
When I search the forums, topics with posts never displayed for me are supposed to be marked with that yellow "page" icon at the beginning of its title, and this icon should go away after posts in that topic are displayed for me.
Right now pretty much all topics are marked as unread for me, including topics where I was the last one to post. They sometimes get marked as read after a refresh, but usually not. I haven't picked up on any pattern yet, except that it's different than it used to, and well, it'd be nice to have this feature back.

On top of that, I think phpbb should use slightly different text colors for topics previously (or recently? ) visited, regardless of new posts being added there afterwards, though this is a minor issue and I don't remember it ever working at FGO, so maybe this version simply does not implement it.
edit: lol, a few topics are now listed in a slightly lighter color. Still, the selection is quite small and appears to be random.

Are there any known issues with those?

stefan11111 · l33t Joined: 29 Jan 2023 Posts: 922 Location: Romania

You seem to describe what happened to me here.
The fix was to update the kernel.
The problem was happening with 6.4.3 and was fixed with 6.4.10.
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szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3139

Oh, c'mon, that's just absurd. I'd expect this kind of state to be completely server-side* and should have absolutely nothing to do with my kernel or even browser.
While your case does indeed look similar, your conclusion must have been wrong.

I checked my emerge log, just in case, my last browser update was over a month ago and this issue started like last week.

* There is way too much information transmitted in cookies though, so maybe something actually got stuck there. I tried relogging to clean things up, but didn't help; maybe I just need to manually delete those instead. Who knows, maybe in your case it was a reboot that cleared some session errors, but sure as hell it wasn't kernel version bump.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

I don't recall having read a similar report, but I can recall that "weird" rendering problems have at times been "fixed" by clearing the browser cache.

I agree that the kernel change seems unlikely to be a fix, but perhaps it also involved a reboot.
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fedeliallalinea · Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2023 4:39 pm Post subject:

stefan11111 · l33t Joined: 29 Jan 2023 Posts: 922 Location: Romania

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3139

So, I installed cookie manager for fine grained control, logged out, rebooted, cleared cookies (while logged out), and nothing happened... Until a few hours later when things suddenly just got back to normal without any further action on my end.

I don't know what the problem really was, but I inspected html generated and sure enough there were were additional links to unread posts next to topics I've already read but forum didn't notice. These links were also absent next to topics correctly marked as read. Basically, the document contained incorrect information.
If there are multiple backends, a failed/delayed synchronization could produce such results... Could also be a session assumed sticky not being sticky enough (reading topic from one node, listing it unread from another). I don't know how is infra set up though, so it's just a guess.

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3139

And... (drums please) it's back!
Topics I already visited, and sometimes even replied to, are still marked with "new posts" icon after refreshing. At fist I though maybe there is some funny caching proxy that got stuck, but no, my nickname is listed as the last poster, so I clearly received a new version of the page.
Huh....

Chiitoo · Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2023 1:10 pm Post subject:

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3139

I don't know, the last post in that topic is 5 years old, so definitely not what you ask about, and that topic is not in my
I think the bug returned yesterday though. Right now the oldest bugged topic seems to be https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8806724.html#8806724
Older posts eventually got marked, so it kinda looks like there was a really long delay... Or maybe ending previous session got them flagged as red, since all topics in my search_id=newposts are flagged as unread

pingtoo · Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2023 3:43 pm Post subject:

A wild guess, could it be some sort time problem on your machine? in your browser? or your gentoo forums profile? North America just past timezone changes a few days ago.

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3139

Well, I'd say that me being served a wrong document (one with wrong content) is a server-side problem by definition. I mean, I see my browser doing a pretty good job translating that html to pixels on my screen, but the document contains stuff that shouldn't be there.
I haven't touched my forum profile in ages.
Wasn't daylight saving time switch flipped 2 weekends ago? That's quite a long delay; things breaking for this reason NOW is a bit too random.
I update browser last week an finally restarted it probably yesterday or 2 days ago, so it roughly matches the time, but even if this happens to be the trigger, it still is a server-side bug, since the server produces a document with wrong content.
Well, I'll try clearing cookies anyway, for sake of getting additional information. Once I'm done waiting for some topic to get marked as red, without expiring my current session.

Edit: lol, https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8806806.html#8806806 instantly got tagged as red when I replied there. Unlike every other topic in my newposts list.

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3139

I'm finally getting somewhere.
It seems that visited topics are stored in cookie phpbb2mysql_t (which BTW is not flagged as secure, unlike the 2 other cookies set by FGO), since deleting it flags all topics since last session as unread.

It's no longer stuck now. Which is funny, since deleting cookies didn't help last time but apparently solved the immediate problem now.
I just wish I saved the headers from before I started messing with cookies. Now I can't check at which point exactly they got stuck anymore. Well, too bad. Maybe next time.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3139

I'm quite confident that this time it was about phpbb using cookies in a funny way. Deleting that one cookie flags all newposts as unread (without breaking the session), so their status clearly is not stored server-side.
I suppose it will eventually glitch out again, and then I'll have a better look at cookie and set-cookie headers and see which end messes things up.