TromboneChat

I can’t easily come back to the forum: it erratically forgets me...

I have to relog nearly each time I come back (several times a day...). Sometimes I’m still logged, but when I read a topic: unlogged...

“Remember me” login keys flushed, board cookies deleted, iPhone/iPad Safari cache and history deleted, devices rebooted several times.

I really don’t know what to do. Am I the only one?

I can’t say anything with a computer: I don’t really use one.

iPhone 6 - iPad Air 2 - iOS 11.3

I get automatically logged out from time to time. Used to be worse; seemed to be you logged in and got only 1 hour of connect time.

I told Chrome to remember my password (I only use it on this and The Trombone Forum, so if it gets stolen there isn't much they can get). I also told Chrome and Firefox to remember me so when I get logged off, I can just log back in almost automatically.

Don't feel bad; you are not alone. Even Moderators get "bumped off".

I kinda liked how I could log into TTF for a week at a time.

Can you try another browser on your iOS device? Mobile Safari is difficult to troubleshoot but that would be the easiest way to see if it's the phpBB software or something with your ISP or device.

Do you use a VPN? Are you always on wifi or do you switch between wifi and mobile internet while you're out and about?

I've not had any trouble on my mobile device but I'm on Android so that isn't necessarily indicative of the existence of a problem or not.

Bruce,

That's interesting. I've yet to be logged out a single time since the upgrade. Who else is having behavior similar to that? Could you report:

OS
Browser (version if you don't mind supplying it, too)
How frequently you get bumped out

In the mean time, I changed some of the browser and ip level verification to be a little more loose. I'll dig out my iPad tonight and see if I can replicate the issue.

Matt K wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2452 11:59 pm Bruce,

That's interesting. I've yet to be logged out a single time since the upgrade. Who else is having behavior similar to that? Could you report:

OS
Browser (version if you don't mind supplying it, too)
How frequently you get bumped out

I bounce between 3 machines:

Thinkpad T510 running Windows 10 Home Premium and Firefox (whatever is the latest -- it keeps updating me).
Dell Precision M4500 running Windows 10 Professional and Chrome.
Dell Precision M4500 running Windows 7 Professional and Chrome.

Sometimes I'll switch machines and discover I'm logged out.
Sometimes if I haven't been on for a while I'll discover I'm logged out on the same machine.

It's really not more than an inconvenience; as I mentioned my login credentials are saved on all 3 machines and login is pretty quick.

I wouldn't object to the default login being good for a week or a month...

The default login is actually set to be indefinite, so it's definitely either a security setting or a bug somewhere.

Matt K wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:38 pm Can you try another browser on your iOS device? Mobile Safari is difficult to troubleshoot but that would be the easiest way to see if it's the phpBB software or something with your ISP or device.

Do you use a VPN? Are you always on wifi or do you switch between wifi and mobile internet while you're out and about?

I've not had any trouble on my mobile device but I'm on Android so that isn't necessarily indicative of the existence of a problem or not.

I don’t use a VPN. I’m switching between WiFi and mobile internet all the day...

Ok: I will try Chrome to see if something changes and I’ll let you know.

Thank you Matt: we really appreciate your work!

Bruce: with TTF I was NEVER kicked off!

PaKETaZ wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:55 pm

Matt K wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:38 pm Can you try another browser on your iOS device? Mobile Safari is difficult to troubleshoot but that would be the easiest way to see if it's the phpBB software or something with your ISP or device.

Do you use a VPN? Are you always on wifi or do you switch between wifi and mobile internet while you're out and about?

I've not had any trouble on my mobile device but I'm on Android so that isn't necessarily indicative of the existence of a problem or not.

I don’t use a VPN. I’m switching between WiFi and mobile internet all the day...

Ok: I will try Chrome to see if something changes and I’ll let you know.

Thank you Matt: we really appreciate your work!

Bruce: with TTF I was NEVER kicked off!

No problem! Hopefully we can get these problems resolved quickly now that we're on the newest version.

I believe in Bruce's case it's that there are different browsers. There is a security loop hole that someone can use to spoof a connection and the browser authentication is one way of preventing it. Basically if it detects a different browser being used, it forces the person to reconnect.

Similar with the IPs. I suspect in your case that is the problem. I will have to do some investigation to see if it is wise to turn these security settings off or if there is some way around them. But the Chrome thing might fix them. I'm not sure if its per user or per session. E.g. if I log in with Chrome on one machine and Firefox on another, will it then kick me off because I'm on a different browser? I don't think so because I've been switching back and forth. BUT if it thinks it switches within the user session (e.g. on my phone when I go from wifi to cellular) then that might be the hiccup.

Matt K wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:39 pm That's interesting. I've yet to be logged out a single time since the upgrade.

Same here, but a moment ago I found myself logged out for the first time. This was on iOS with Safari after I came home, so connected to WiFi; I had used it before on mobile data. During the last couple of days I switched between mobile data and WiFi multiple times without getting logged out though.

StefanHaller wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 3:20 pm

Matt K wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:39 pm That's interesting. I've yet to be logged out a single time since the upgrade.

Same here, but a moment ago I found myself logged out for the first time. This was on iOS with Safari after I came home, so connected to WiFi; I had used it before on mobile data. During the last couple of days I switched between mobile data and WiFi multiple times without getting logged out though.

Must be session level then!

Matt K wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:44 pm In the mean time, I changed some of the browser and ip level verification to be a little more loose. I'll dig out my iPad tonight and see if I can replicate the issue.

Well: I use iOS Safari since Thursday and I had NEVER been disconnected... WiFi and mobile internet. I think what you did at the moment was the right thing Matt.
Thanks!

I have the infamous “log in back problem” since a few days: something has changed in the server settings?

I cleared evething i could on my iPad/iPhone, but I’m unlogged repeatedly...

PaKETaZ wrote: ↑Wed May 30, 2018 1:29 pm I have the infamous “log in back problem” since a few days: something has changed in the server settings?

I cleared evething i could on my iPad/iPhone, but I’m unlogged repeatedly...

Yeah the DNS has been altered a few times since yesterday so we might get some turbulence for a day or two. Could you let me know in a day or two if you're still having the problem? Also anyone else who might be having the issue as well. I suspect it might be your systems dns. I had that trouble on my phone today but going "incognito" fixed it, which is what is leading me to that conclusion.

I've had this problem since Day 1 and it hasn't gone away. If I don't actively use TC for a couple of hours it "forgets" me and I need to log back in to use any feature that requires I be logged in. Since I use a password that is used only for this Forum and TTF, I let my browser "remember" the password and a relog is merely a click away.

Interesting. I'll see if I can spend some time investigating this weekend when this DNS problem has blown over. I can open up a ticket with the phpBB software and see if other forums are having the issue as well. It's hard for me to fix something I can't replicate and I haven't had any luck replicating some of these issues!

Aside from the temporary outage yesterday, I have had no problem with TromboneChat forgetting me, except when I intentionally clear my cache / cookies, in which case I must re-enter my user name & password. But apparently some browsers can be set to automatically clear cache / cookies when exiting. In any case, it's always been easy for me to enter the door.

Ok. It seems the problem comes only from my iPad, not my iPhone. Strange...
I have already flushed away “Remember Me” login keys, deleted cookies directly from the forum main page then from the device settings, unlogged from iCloud then logged in back... Several times... Don’t know...

PaKETaZ wrote: ↑Sun Jun 03, 2018 4:31 pm Ok. It seems the problem comes only from my iPad, not my iPhone. Strange...
I have already flushed away “Remember Me” login keys, deleted cookies directly from the forum main page then from the device settings, unlogged from iCloud then logged in back... Several times... Don’t know...

Still using Safari on both devices, right? Do you use the same Wifi network for both devices? (I'm assuming you use internet over your phone provider for your phone as well, but not the iPad?) Are they the same iOS version?

(Trying to figure out what differences there might be.)

Yes, I'm talking about trombonechatting at home, with same WiFi, same iOS version (up to date) and Safari on both devices.

But if I’m alone, don’t burden you: I will investigate more myself.

Thanks Matt

You aren't alone. If I simply move away from TC in my browser, or use a non-online app (like a game) and come back I need to relog into TC. And I'm supposedly staff with higher access.

I'm sure Matt K will figure it out or find somebody who can.

Its probably a security setting. It's one of the things thats a little annoying about privacy --- sites like Facebook, for example, know that it's "you" when you come back because they track a LOT of information about it. phpBB by default does very, very little of this. Therefore, if you have some change between our servers and you... it'll say, "Hey, wait a minute... that's a different IP address" or "Hey, hold up, that person might have left their chair and not locked their computer for 25 minutes... I better make sure someone doesn't post something on their behalf". I've disabled most of the latter settings because they're really more inconveniences and we're not dealing with anything remotely sensitive.

The problem is that I don't have the problem so it's hard to replicate. Therefore, I can assume that it isn't the latter --- unless there is some personal account setting that one might have changed. The more information I can get the better. Fortunately, it's presently more of an inconvenience than anything and not more pervasive (like the login issues that plagued the last software). I didn't have much time to play around with it this weekend, but I should this week a little. Please, if anyone else is having the problem, let me know about it. The more information I can get the faster I'll probably be able to solve it!!

You know what? Since my iPad runs iOS 12 beta... I can reach TC each time without having to sign in again! Something wrong with iOS 11? I don’t know...But it works flawlessly.

And thank you (and Tetraphosphate) for the favicon!

PaKETaZ wrote: ↑Tue Aug 28, 2018 11:07 pm You know what? Since my iPad runs iOS 12 beta... I can reach TC each time without having to sign in again! Something wrong with iOS 11? I don’t know...But it works flawlessly.

And thank you (and Tetraphosphate) for the favicon!

(you made me smile)

Suddenly after the migration I am logged out any time I turn the screen off my phone. Forum forgets me and the login info isn't remembered. I also tried clearing cookies etc.

harrisonreed wrote: ↑Sat Nov 17, 2018 1:27 pm Suddenly after the migration I am logged out any time I turn the screen off my phone. Forum forgets me and the login info isn't remembered. I also tried clearing cookies etc.

Same here, only the login info is remembered.

Yeah, when we migrated (likely the last time we'll need to) I had to flush my cookies and cache. Then I had to re-do my bookmark for it, too, since it seemed to be pointing to a slightly different URL or perhaps an IP address. In any event, I fixed it. Things should be settled in. Thanks for your patience!

This stopped working for me (not sure when -- maybe a week ago?). I can't seem to get the site to remember me despite having tried the tricks suggested here. It MAY have been coincident with my changing over to MS Edge from Chrome, but it's not working in either browser (or Firefox) at this point. Firefox (by the way) says that the connection is not secure. I'm not having this problem on other sites that remember me.

Dave Werden was having a problem on his site for a while where it would "forget" you if it redirected to some other internal pages under certain circumstances. He seemed to work that out, but I don't recall the details. It took him quite a while to resolve it.

I am still forgotten any time I close my phone.

ghmerrill wrote: ↑Wed Dec 05, 2018 8:36 am This stopped working for me (not sure when -- maybe a week ago?). I can't seem to get the site to remember me despite having tried the tricks suggested here. It MAY have been coincident with my changing over to MS Edge from Chrome, but it's not working in either browser (or Firefox) at this point. Firefox (by the way) says that the connection is not secure. I'm not having this problem on other sites that remember me.

Dave Werden was having a problem on his site for a while where it would "forget" you if it redirected to some other internal pages under certain circumstances. He seemed to work that out, but I don't recall the details. It took him quite a while to resolve it.

I still have the unencrypted ("not secure") sessions enabled because it was causing people to have similar problems and as soon as I reenabled them they went away. Haven't had time to figure out if it was a user problem or a phpBB problem.

I have't either of those issues with Chrome & Firefox though. I haven't actually tested Edge in awhile though... and I see they are discontinuing it as of a few days ago but I can fire up the old Windows machine and give it a test to see if it can contribute some information on the situation.

Just to make sure though, you cleared cookies & cache totally? Perhaps you used edge awhile ago and forgot so its still thinking the site is at the old server? Are you on Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile?

Could you find your OS and try to flush your DNS cache?
https://unihost.com/help/how-to-clear-the-dns-cache/

Its not likely to fix the problem but its an easy thing to rule out.

harrisonreed wrote: ↑Wed Dec 05, 2018 9:08 am I am still forgotten any time I close my phone.

What browser/os is your phone on? I've tested it on several of the Android browsers but I don't actively use Apple products... I do have an old iPad 2 I could fire up to see if it works on Safari

I just (again) cleared the browsing data AND then flushed the DNS cache. That seems to have fixed the problem. Sorry I missed the reference to that in one of your earlier postings.

I'm on Android with Dolphin Browser

I seem to be getting similar behaviour on macOs (High Sierra (10.13.6)) and Firefox(63.0.3). Every time I shut Firefox down the site forgets me. Safari seems to work fine though, and at work I use Chrome on Windows 10 without a problem.

In the macOs case this happens on two different macs and I've cleared, cookies and cache in Firefox and also the DNS cache.

Ronnie

ronnies wrote: ↑Fri Dec 07, 2018 12:40 am I seem to be getting similar behaviour on macOs (High Sierra (10.13.6)) and Firefox(63.0.3). Every time I shut Firefox down the site forgets me. Safari seems to work fine though, and at work I use Chrome on Windows 10 without a problem.

In the macOs case this happens on two different macs and I've cleared, cookies and cache in Firefox and also the DNS cache.

Ronnie

Did you flush the system DNS cache? Seems like that is fixing it for most people. The link below has the terminal command that will execute that. I think you need sudo privilege.

harrisonreed wrote: ↑Wed Dec 05, 2018 8:36 pm I'm on Android with Dolphin Browser

For the phone, it looks like Android will automatically flush when you do a full power down so hold power button -> power down. Wait for like 30 seconds and thne power on again. I've never used Dolphin but if that doesn't work I can install it over the weekend and see if there's anything amiss.

Thanks!

I just started having the same problem yesterday. Same desktop, same Windows, same browser (Chrome) as before.

Alas, on repeated use, this isn't really working for me. Here's some more (possibly useful?) information:

1. Dave Werden's forum remembers me whenever I access the URL (www.dwerden.com/forum, but it then substitutes another URL for this generic one of the form www.dwerden.com/forum/activity.php#xxxxxxxxx).
2. The Tubnet site remembers me (even using the high-level URL of http://forums.chisham.com/).
3. I don't get logged out of either site even if I kill my browser and come back to them much later.
4. I now have my browser remembering my logon information for Trombonechat so that I just need to go to the site and then do a one-click login. But ...
5. If I log in to Trombone chat via the URL www.trombonechat.com, and click the "remember me" box, the original URL is replaced by one with an SID in it. If I thereafter access the site in just the trombonechat.com URL, I'm required to log in again. If I access the site with the URL containing the SID, I'm taken to the forum and shown as being already logged in. BUT ... (and I've now tested this a number of times) ... access via this URL is NOT PERSISTENT. It seems to work for a (so far undetermined) amount of time, and then stops working. This appears to be browser independent.

I've spent a decent amount of time on this in an attempt to ensure that this description is accurate and repeatable. I'm pretty sure it is, but I could have missed something. Assuming that it is, I THINK it points the finger at a problem with the site (rather than with people's browsers) where something isn't persisting as it should. But I can't think of anything I can do to take the investigation any further. The basic facts seem to be that I've got two forum sites where I've got fully persistent logon memory by the site, one site where the logon memory appears to be only temporary, and where this appears to be browser independent. I don't know if this will help you any.

Yeah, still doesn't work for me. Mang!

Make sure that the beginning of the URL reads "https://" rather than "http://". The 's' indicates a secure connection. When I had this problem I made sure to redirect my browser to access this site from "https://trombonechat.com"; when I did that the problem went away.

I'm using the URLs that are GENERATED BY THE SITE. If those don't work, then something's wrong.

Not saying there isn't something wrong, just what worked for me to fix it. I believe that the 's' thing was something added to the site a few months ago in order to keep it a little bit more secure? Anyway, your browser may just be remembering the URL from before, that's why it is having problems. At least that was why I was having problems...

So here's one thing that seems wrong ...

When you log into the site ab initio and click the "remember me" box, the URL it takes you to does NOT display as a secure (HTTPS) URL in your browser. If you then bookmark it (or even copy and then paste it some time later, or after you've killed your browser instance and then started again), it of course doesn't provide you the HTTPS access and so won't see you as logged in, and you'll have to log in again.

And you're correct that if you instead prepend the HTTPS to the URL that the site provides when you log in with "remember me", then you DO get access and you're connection is shown as secure and you're logged in.

What this suggests is that (a) the "remember me" functionality is actually working (i.e., the site does remember you), but (b) the URL the site displays and returns to your browser when you log in with "remember me" isn't the secure URL -- so when you bookmark it, you're saving the non-secure URL for later access; and when you use it, you won't be "remembered".

I've never done enough work at this level on sites with these types of forums to know what it's supposed to be doing and how much variation of this there is among products/implementations. But it seems to me that when you log in with "remember me", then the site ought to at least provide the HTTPS version of where it's sending you (for bookmark purposes), and probably should also be somehow handling identification of you if you use a non-secure URL for access. I say this last part because both Werden's site and Tubenet provide me with "remembered access" even though what is displayed in my browser header is identified as "Not secure". Or so it seems to me, though I'm going pretty much on speculation here and could be wrong.

However, users should never have to hand-edit URLs in order to get the functionality that "remember me" is supposed to provide.

Fixed a number of issues under the hood tonight, Neo will post the details shortly!

Just FYI, when I accessed it this morning (via https://www.trombonechat.com), the site was EXTREMELY slow in responding and displaying pages. It had also forgotten me again although this was working fine yesterday. I then logged in (checking the "remember me" box), and the current URL displayed is of the form: trombonechat.com/viewtopic.php?XXX&sid=YYY. It's also flagged as "Not secure".

It's no longer slow. So perhaps that was just a temporary situation if background stuff was going on this morning.

Matt K wrote: ↑Fri Dec 07, 2018 8:29 am
Did you flush the system DNS cache? Seems like that is fixing it for most people. The link below has the terminal command that will execute that. I think you need sudo privilege.

Yes I did. Seems to be fixed this morning for the MacBook I have with me at work. I'll check the iMac when I get home. Interestingly the Win10/Chrome combination stopped working this morning until I cleared the cookies again.

Ronnie

Forget the message that was here. Must have been a Chrome thing. I just cleared the data again and it's working.

Yeah I made a number of changes on the backend so if you're experiencing issues, best to clear your cache/cookies. I was able to recreate the problem finally on my Firefox installation this morning and that was essentially the root of the problem. So some of the "forgets me" issues are very possibly residual problems from the previous configuration.

I went ahead and set a redirect for the http requests to sort of "force" https but phpBB sessions makes that sort of difficult (related to the "forum forgets me..." origin of this thread).

Also, temporarily, the email address for this site is [email protected] so if you start getting emails from it (signed by mailfence, such as the image below) that's us. It'll come from an @trombonechat.com email soon but that's still in the works.

One thing you might consider (though I know there's a real downside to this) is somehow providing a direct email link to one of the site admins on the web site. The experience I had earlier this morning was that things seemed to be working with Edge, but not with Chrome. I went to Chrome again and flushed the browsing data. When I tried to log in, I couldn't. It wouldn't take what I KNEW to be the correct ID/Pwd. I then clicked the link to have my password sent to me. When I filled out and submitted the form, it was rejected as invalid. Nothing I could do would get around this problem. I tried to get the activation message. Same story: invalid form. I tried to contact an adminstrator. Same story: invalid form. So I couldn't log in and I couldn't communicate with an administrator.

I went back to Edge and managed to log in. Then I went back to Chrome and again (about the fourth or fifth time?) flushed the browsing data. I'm on with Chrome now and it SEEMS to be working. I'm willing to concede that the no man's land I got into was very likely a Chrome issue (since presumably the browser was doing the form validation?), but I was totally stuck. If Edge hadn't worked, I don't know what I'd have done. Probably I would have registered a new account (it wouldn't, of course, let me re-register the existing account -- so SOME forms were working). I also probably would have reinstalled Chrome. But that's a long way to go for a log in issue.

Anyhow ... hence my suggestion of providing some mechanism for a direct email link that doesn't depend on the site functioning. Perhaps that's what this @mailfence.com address will/can provide? But then it needs to be exposed somehow to a user who can access the site but can't sign on -- since sending messages to anyone via the site requires signing on. Do it via a captcha dialog or whatever -- as a kind of last resort for communication. Just a thought.

This is probably a good idea. Richard Byrd set up Gmail accounts for all of us on TromboneForum and I posted my account on the Forum. My account is still active: [email protected], although I don't check it that often since TTF is "gone". Even if you send me an e-mail there, I can't do the kinds of things I used to do on TTF. Better off trying to get Matt K.

ghmerrill wrote: ↑Mon Dec 10, 2018 8:16 am One thing you might consider (though I know there's a real downside to this) is somehow providing a direct email link to one of the site admins on the web site.
:snip:
Anyhow ... hence my suggestion of providing some mechanism for a direct email link that doesn't depend on the site functioning. Perhaps that's what this @mailfence.com address will/can provide? But then it needs to be exposed somehow to a user who can access the site but can't sign on -- since sending messages to anyone via the site requires signing on. Do it via a captcha dialog or whatever -- as a kind of last resort for communication. Just a thought.

That's correct! You may do that now with the [email protected] address and once we get the domain email taken care of we'll have emails sent there as well, probably splitting them up into administrative and moderation topics.

With most websites, you can email [email protected], and we'll have something similar at the bottom so that if you can access the site, you can see the email you'd need to contact.

So you'd see instead of:

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You'd see

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[url:mailto:[email protected]]Contact the webmaster[/url]