Hi,

Mollom has stopped protecting forms on my site www.ansn.edu.au.

I upgraded to 7.2.4 and I'm getting this error.

The server time of this site is incorrect. The time of the operating system is not synchronized with the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which prevents a successful authentication with Mollom. The maximum allowed offset is 5 minutes. Please consult your hosting provider or server operator to correct the server time.

I'm guessing this is the problem, can anyone tell me how to fix the server? It's a VPS running plesk.

I'd love some help with this, I had 500 spam user registrations over the weekend.

Thanks in advance.

Joe

Comments

joewickert’s picture

joewickert CreditAttribution: joewickert commented
Status: Active » Fixed

Hi,

Just managed to sort this out. Hopefully this will help others who have the same problem.

In Plesk you can go to "system time" under "tools and settings"

I ticked the box next to "Synchronize system time"

And put "pool.ntp.org" as the domain name.

Mollom working fine now.

Cheers

joe

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

sylvain_a’s picture

sylvain_a CreditAttribution: sylvain_a commented

Any advice for non-Plesk users?
My hosting company is using Panelbox and don't seem to offer this option.

Is there a way to tweak the offset value until my hosting company resolves this request?

danon1981’s picture

danon1981 CreditAttribution: danon1981 commented

I encountered the same issue on a VPS running Centos 6 as far as I know it is not possible to set the server time from within directadmin as can be done in plesk. This post might help others not using plesk.

My server time was off by more than 30 minutes well exceeding the 5 minute limit mollom requires.
To synchronise the server time I followed the following steps.

Synchronising the server time made mollom kicking spam once more.

Type the following command to install ntp
# yum install ntp

Turn on service
# chkconfig ntpd on

Synchronize the system clock with 0.pool.ntp.org server:
# ntpdate pool.ntp.org

Start the NTP:
# /etc/init.d/ntpd start

Sivaji_Ganesh_Jojodae’s picture

Sivaji_Ganesh_Jojodae CreditAttribution: Sivaji_Ganesh_Jojodae commented

And for those who are using Ubuntu, the fix is here http://askubuntu.com/a/138442 I'm using 11.04, it did work for me like a charm.

cmejo’s picture

cmejo CreditAttribution: cmejo commented

For people using Debian (in my case, Squeeze):

apt-get install ntp
/etc/init.d/ntp stop
ntpdate pool.ntp.org
/etc/init.d/ntp start

should do the trick!

simone960’s picture

simone960 CreditAttribution: simone960 commented

what about Direct Admin or Cpanel ? Any solution for this?

RuudVanEck’s picture

RuudVanEck CreditAttribution: RuudVanEck commented

I have the same problem, using DirectAdmin

danon1981’s picture

danon1981 CreditAttribution: danon1981 commented

My server is running DirectAdmin and there was, as far as I know, no way to change this from within DA,
that might be the same for Cpanel.

If you have full access on your server you could try following the steps, (Debian, CentOs, Ubuntu) mentioned in previous comments

If you don't have server access you could contact your hosting company and ask them if they can help you out.

awebmanager’s picture

awebmanager CreditAttribution: awebmanager commented
Issue summary: View changes

I was getting this problem on a D7 site despite resetting the server clock twice. That site was running Mollom version 7.x-2.4. However, I had another site running on the same server which didn't have the problem - this site was running 7.x-2.8. Updating the module solved the problem.

gippy’s picture

gippy CreditAttribution: gippy commented

I have a VPS on Bluehost. It has cPanel & WHM. To resolve this issue, open WHM, navigate to "Server Configuration" > "Server Time". In my case, the time was about 7 minutes off from the system time on my laptop. I clicked "Sync Time with Time Server". That then changed my server time to match the current time. I don't know if it was necessary, but I ran Cron on the Drupal server. Mollom then no longer reported the problem.

shaneod’s picture

shaneod CreditAttribution: shaneod commented

Sorry to reopen this thread but wanted to let people on shared hosting know.

I was running the latest version of Mollum and it was having the problem.

I asked support at hosting company and they reset the time on the shared hosting server and it is working fine again now.