exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hi,

is it just me or the forum now forces users to log in way more often than it used to? I haven't measured it precisely but it seems like my login is remember for a few days at most and then I have to log in again (fortunately Chrome remembers my credentials but still).

mikro wrote: 01 Apr 2024 09:42 Hi,

is it just me or the forum now forces users to log in way more often than it used to? I haven't measured it precisely but it seems like my login is remember for a few days at most and then I have to log in again (fortunately Chrome remembers my credentials but still).

Not a problem for me, I'm on Mac and using Edge and rarely get asked to log back in, if at all. I usually have a couple of other similar PHPBB sites open all the time and they remain logged in too. Currently it's been so long since I was asked to log in to these sites on my laptop I can't remember when it last was.

The only place I have to log on regularly is on my phone, where I have the same sites open as on my laptop.

With the "remember me" option unticked, the forum session will expire after an hour. So always tick the box if you plan to post , otherwise you will be logged out and lose your post. So if you start a post, then walk away for a couple hours, come back, and try to continue your post, it will fail as you will have been logged out.

With the "remember me" option ticked, your session will expire after 2 hours (phpbb default was 1 hour) if you are not active on the forum. For example, the index page will refresh automatically every 5mins or so, so your session gets reset to the 2 hours mark. If you navigate to any other page, like reading a thread, and there is no activity from you during that time, the 2 hour timer starts, then phpbb assumes you have gone after the 2 hour time expires, and logs you out.

If your getting logged out quicker, then you likely have a problem with cookies. You will normally get a SID (long number) in the URL on the forum if there is a problem with cookies.

So basically the "remember me" function doesn't keep you logged in indefinitely. Only 2 hours. I guess phpbb coders thought the time-out was necessary due to security. Certainly nothing has changed in that respect since the forum first went live.

Things have changed since the last upgrade. My iPad would stay logged in for months but now it's random and every other day or so. At least I now remember the forum username and password, even if it's a pain to type it on an on-screen keyboard.

My Firefox desktop just stays logged in for weeks.

stephen_usher wrote: 01 Apr 2024 10:44 Things have changed since the last upgrade.

Which upgrade are you specifically referring to ?

Looking at the cookies in chrome, it looks like they expire after a year. But indeed if people are not active on the forum, or not on the home page, then logging out seems to be the norm. I even checked on a few threads on the phpbb forum.

I don't really get what the difference is with the cookie expiring after a year, but then the session seems to expire after two hours. I would have thought the cookie would have expired to terminate the session :shrug:.

Haven't really taken much notice to it. Though I don't recall having to login after leaving the computer off all night. But I will see if this happens tonight.

I will clear the forum cache nex everyone will likely get kicked out. But I certainly haven't seen any behavioural differences. I will keep an eye on it though to see if anything looks odd.

Well this is odd.. I cannot purge the sessions..

exxos wrote: 01 Apr 2024 11:41

stephen_usher wrote: 01 Apr 2024 10:44 Things have changed since the last upgrade.

Which upgrade are you specifically referring to ?

When you upgraded the server a couple of months ago.

stephen_usher wrote: 01 Apr 2024 11:45 When you upgraded the server a couple of months ago.

It was only a package upgrade though. It was basically a direct disk to disk copy. If anything would have likely broken, I would assume it would have been over a year ago when I upgraded to nginx.

So the purge sessions wasn't working due to a permission problem with the SQL user for the forum. That's now fixed. But I don't know if it will help with @mikro problem...

@stephen_usher you will have to tell me either way if there is any change with the login situation..

Aside from the direct this to this copy to the new server, I did have problems with the SQL users.. Indeed some permissions were screwed up with that.. But I don't really know what else could have changed outside of that problem.