Hi All,
I really need some help with my board. Something has gone wrong. the symptoms are:
1. When I log in I am redirected back to the previous page which still shows "welcome guest", however when I navigate to another forum section it shows my username.
2. When I clear cookies and reload the page it shows me logged in as another user
3. When I logout, it takes me back to the previous page i was on which still shows "welcome back, username"
4. When I create a post, it took a few minutes to reflect.
This all started after I wanted to "activate a user" (using the link in messaging saying go to ACP) but it would not log into Admin CP. I would see the login screen press login and nothing happens.
I was able to access the ACP via the direct link. I then decided that maybe I should rebuild all the cache... and since then its been affecting all users.
I came across a post to backup and delete inc/settings.php which i did, it was recreated with 644 which I altered to 666. I then resaved the settings via ACP and cleared my local cookies.
However things are still as per 1,3,4 above.
from my settings.php:
$settings['cookiedomain'] = ".samini.co.za";
$settings['cookiepath'] = "/";
$settings['cookieprefix'] = "";
I would really appreciate any help, Im on 1.8.6. My forum is located @
www.samini.co.za
Thanks
Who's your host? Do they have any server level caching installed?
Host is called Afrihost, I do not belive there is any server level cache.
Another symptom is that post remain unread even when viewed/read.
I have confirmed that no server side caching is used. I would really appreciate any help or direction in this matter.
As per item 4, When I disable a plugin it takes a few minutes to actually reflect under the disabled list.
While browsing around I noticed that it is showing "welcome back, <user>..." where <user> is always someone that is concurrently online.
Some additional possibly relevant information? chrome cookie viewer is showing the cookies as split:
[
attachment=37574]
[
attachment=37575]
[
attachment=37576]
The cookies being split wouldn't be causing this, but you should really make it so your site can't be accessed with and without the www.
As for your issue though, it does sound like the same symptoms of caching we've had in the past. There is nothing in MyBB that will make plugins take several minutes to show as deactivated, it's not how the code works, and to be shown as logged in as someone else sounds exactly like the issue Steam had with misconfigured Varnish caching.
Yeah, it looks like you have caching enabled.
I can see this in the response headers for the page:
X-Cache-Status:HIT
After a quick Google:
Quote:X-Cache: Did this proxy serve the result from cache (HIT for yes, MISS for no).
So what is happening is, someone is requesting a URL (when logged in), that page is being cached, and then when you request that same URL, the same exact page as the first user got is then delivered to you. Thus, you see the page as if you were logged in as the other user. This is the same issue that Steam had, where users would see the My Account page of other random users.
You need to contact your host again. We've had quite a few users have this issue, it must be something hosts are deploying to try and take the load off their already overcrowded servers.
Thank you very much Matt, I was really pulling at straws trying to figure this thing out.
I have re-opened the support ticket with the host, hopefully they are able to resolve it quickly.
Hi Again,
Seems like the host is confused, first they told me to check cache-control in my htaccess file. Of which I confirmed I have no such directives and the file has not been changed in the past year.
I was then informed that they cannot turn off cache. I've raised the concern that the Forum has been working 100% for the last year now all of a sudden we have issues. Any suggestions of further evidence/suggestions to provide to the host?
Thanks
Hm, I'm not sure what to suggest really. If it's only recently started, they've clearly added something, the presence of that header is pretty clear cut to me.
Can you escalate the ticket maybe? You might have no option but to move hosts if it's something applied server-level that they can't disable for you.
They have pointed me to the PHP info: redacted
specifically to the parameter "xcache.cacher" which is set off.
Would any php mis/configuration affect Cache?
Thanks, removed the link from your post as want to keep a lot of that information secret!
XCache may well be turned off, but there's other caching mechanisms that could be being used.
Ask them to explain where the X-Cache-Status header is being sent from. They're running your server, they should be able to manage this.
Here's another link, direct from the Nginx website (your site is being served by Nginx rather than Aapche)
https://www.nginx.com/blog/nginx-caching-guide/
Scroll down to the FAQs section:
Quote:Can the NGINX Cache Be Instrumented?
Yes, with the add_header directive:
add_header X-Cache-Status $upstream_cache_status;
Quote:HIT – The response contains valid, fresh content direct from the cache.
This won't show up in your PHP info because it's an Nginx configuration setting.
If they refuse to do anything after sending them a link direct to the Nginx documentation, I suggest you move provider as you are paying them for very sub-par service otherwise.