Session Timeouts- recently upgraded server (to 5.6.31)

Started by 3dphoto, September 21, 2017, 02:25:50 AM

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3dphoto

Hi,


I found out the hard way that 2.0.14 needed a newer installation of PHP than was on my old server.  I had the host upgrade me, so they put me on 5.6.31, which is good enough for the latest patch to work.  The Forum works, if you are logged in already, but does throw occasional session timeout messages.  However, in login, it throws them all the time.


Here's the PHP info file:
http://www.3dphoto.net/forum/phpinfo.php


Given that the Forum is 11 years old, and has gone through numerous patches and the big jump to 2.0, I'm wondering if I can back up my content, do a fresh, clean installation of SMF, then restore the content.  If that's doable, I can't get to it until November due to being at a very busy time at work.  But I am thinking about that to sort of start over installation wise.


Until I have time to do that, I'd like to get this resolved as it's blocking installation of a Phereo 3D plug-in for viewing 3D images in-situ in the Forum.  That plug-in, which has been running for years, is crucial to the Forum's core membership. 


Thanks for any tips and guidance- I'll check back in evenings if anyone has any ideas.  I love the functionality that SMF gives, but I am afraid years of patching may have left some traces of damage (and any new installation will use fewer plug-ins, too).


Thanks,
Jeff

Looking

So your issues is session time out and getting the plugin to work? I'm not sure I understand the reason for restoring content. When you upgraded to SMF 2.0.14 your content did not show?

3dphoto

Hi,

What I am seeing is that there are timeouts when submitting data, be it a post, a password, etc...  if I install the plug in, the timeout problem occurs 100% of the time.  If I remove the plug in, it occurs haphazardly when posting.  However, when trying to log in from the top of the Forum, 100% of the time you cannot even log it- it says, during login, "Your session timed out while posting.  Please go back and try again".  This is during the password entry.  The only way to even log in is to click the "login" link on the top of the forum and bring up a separate log in page- from there, logging in works as expected.

I am getting strange errors.  This all started when the 2.0.13->.14 upgrade failed due to old PHP version no longer supported.  That tanked the Forum, and I had to have my host restore backup 24 hours earlier to .13.  Then I had them upgrade me, which meant moving to a new server.  Once there and verified (no issues with posting except for a broken plug-in), I upgraded to .14, and now I get these timeouts.  And attempts to fix that broken plug-in exacerbate it.

Longer term I am thinking of just starting over with a from-scratch installation and minimal plug-ins and restoring the content to that new instance.  But it'll be 2 months before I have bandwidth to do that. Meanwhile, I'm looking to patch it up and get by until them.  I love SMF's utility, but I don't know how well it stands up to 11+ years of patching.  Certainly in the PC world, you would never run a Windows installation that long- you'd be getting BSODs all the time.  Every once in a while it's good to do a clean installation and restore the data important to you.  I'm wondering if that is also a good practice on SMF.  I did, after all, start with 1.0.x and have been through about 20 patches and upgrades, plus one major host migration to a new PHP version and new servers.

But, in the short term, just finding the timeout issue would make me happy.

Thanks,
Jeff

Looking

What kind of hosting are you using? Shared, VPS, dedicated?

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