session not able to track read topics [RESOLVED]

[pingtoo]

Not sure if any body else experience this. My session seems not able to track topic been read. It is continue show as un-read topic. This happen to me yesterday afternoon (EST).

I remember I seen this happen in the past. This usually lead to forums software stop function later.

[Max Steel]

I get this error every now and then. When this happens i get it working again by deleting all cookies in my browser and relogin.

[grknight]

I gave up on this being automatic as it quickly breaks.

I simply rely on using the "Mark all topics read" link on a forum to keep track.

Also, the "You last visited on" time on the main page seems to be the basis of this feature.

[szatox]

I had something like that a while ago; there is a cookie that holds recently visited posts. Deleting it should fix things.
I actually had better results deleting only this one cookie than deleting all cookies set by FGO.

[pingtoo]

Thanks to all those reply. I should check my browser cookie jar to clean up.

[grknight]

What I believe is happening is the serialized PHP array, which is then html encoded, is hitting the cookie max size limit (4096 bytes) and then just being rejected by browsers (and possibly servers) as invalid.

As it stores topics and UNIX timestamps as key/value, the size of the numbers and encoding along with the number of topics people read increase exponentially and quickly run out of space for a cookie.

Yes, you can temporarily clear out the Session cookie but the issue is likely to return particularly if persistent login is enabled.

I doubt there is a real fix with this old software, but maybe one day it can work as intended.

[grknight]

I can easily replicate this issue and it is the phpbb2mysql_t cookie.

Every time a topic is viewed, this cookie increases in size 31 bytes on average. Once the reader hits over 130 topics read, with modern times and topic numeric size, the cookie sent back is no longer valid and rejected by the browser.

Unless the browser clears the cookie, the forum software is not smart enough to do on its own. I believe that the forum is counting on "closing the browser" to clear a session cookie. However, they don't seem to do that as easily. I can logout, close the tab, close the browser and this cookie persists.

I know it is beating a dead horse to try to fix phpbb2, but I wanted to share my findings.

[Hu]

Thank you for the findings. Even if the forum software is not fixed, your results should help other users who want to delete only the bad cookie, without wiping out the rest of their state.

[grknight]

Ah, phpBB does account for this, but not well enough due to the popularity of the forum and 32-bit time().
https://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/forums.g ... mscvs#n573 :

Code: Select all

if ( count($tracking_topics) >= 150 && empty($tracking_topics[$topic_id]) )

Since we are under 150 before an invalid cookie, it breaks very easily.

Strangely enough, posting a topic or reply looks for a count of 100.

[pingtoo]

I can easily replicate this issue and it is the phpbb2mysql_t cookie.

Every time a topic is viewed, this cookie increases in size 31 bytes on average. Once the reader hits over 130 topics read, with modern times and topic numeric size, the cookie sent back is no longer valid and rejected by the browser.

Unless the browser clears the cookie, the forum software is not smart enough to do on its own. I believe that the forum is counting on "closing the browser" to clear a session cookie. However, they don't seem to do that as easily. I can logout, close the tab, close the browser and this cookie persists.

I know it is beating a dead horse to try to fix phpbb2, but I wanted to share my findings.

Thanks for the information.

I can confirm this behavior. I usually don't always keep my machine turn on for more that two days. But my current session have been up for more than two weeks and I do persist login. So it is exact match.