By ryooki on

People have been having problems posting to my site, I don't know why. My boyfriend, who is on the computer right behind me, attempted to post a response to a comment a few minutes ago. When he did, it didn't post correctly. When he refreshed the page, it was all gone. The log says:
Type content
Date Thursday, October 13, 2005 - 17:03
User Anonymous
Location /comment/reply/131
Message Comment: unauthorized comment submitted or comment submitted to a closed node (Iraq was never a threat to the US.).
Severity warning
Hostname 69.69.248.196

Is there anyway to get this content back, or is it gone for ever?

Thanks!

Comments

benshell’s picture

benshell commented

I'm sure that comment is gone. :( It looks like he was logged out while trying to post (his session expired). What version of Drupal are you using? I used to have that happen a lot with Drupal 4.5, but I haven't had it since I upgraded to 4.6.x.

Anyway, this can be a real problem anywhere on the web. I usually type long posts in Notepad or another text editor first and then copy and paste them to the web. Sometimes I don't though, and so I still lose posts sometimes.

JohnG-1’s picture

JohnG-1 commented

I'm trying to teach myself to copy posts at least to the clipboard before pressing submit ... hardly ever remember though.

BobT-1’s picture

BobT-1 commented

From the message it seems that the comment was dropped, which means it was never saved. I concur with the above assessment that your bf's session timed out, although I've never experienced such a time out on my site.

I have been able to find "lost" posts by logging in with the first account and clicking administer » content. That is a list of all content, so if the comment is not there, it does not exist.

I don't know what would cause the time out. I have typed rather long articles without problems, left the site logged in and open for many hours then come back and posted and administered, etc.
_________
bob-thompson.com

ryooki’s picture

ryooki commented

I'm not really sure either. I did orginally change a couple of settings in the settins.php file:
<?code
ini_set('session.cookie_lifetime', 7200);
ini_set('session.gc_maxlifetime', 72000);
?>

At first, I had both set to 30min b/c I wanted the sessions to time out when used on public computers (ie. my work computers) a little while after the browser had been closed. However, that proved to be too short, because people were timing out despite not closing the browser, just typing for a while.

Then again, it rarely seemed to time me out on my home computer, despite my clearing all my cookies. I'd come back after sleeping for the night, click a link, and I was stilled logged in. Of course, he for some reason kept timing out all the time, which he said made my site unusable.

Then, I changed it to 3 hours b/c I thought that would be a nice compromise. It was on this setting that he ran into his problem. Looking back at the log, he had opened a session 1.5hrs before the "time out," last commented on a post 1hr prior, and I know for a fact that he had been clicking around at least 30min prior to the event. Looking at the log, he had opened the reply window 15min prior to the event (so it must have taken him ~15min to write it).

I know that he many have increased some of his security settings on his computer, but he says he never has difficulties on other forums (& he uses a lot of different ones). I worry that other people would have the same problem, and this would make my site not so useable.

Thanks for your input!
-----
Drupal project page: www.liberalthinkers.org (awaiting flamers)

BobT-1’s picture

BobT-1 commented

Looking at my setting.php, I can't tell by looking which of the session. variables is the one that determines the timeout. However, for my site these are unchanged from the default.

My best guess, based not on my knowledge of drupal but on similar behaviors on sites such as mail.yahoo.com, is that the timeout might be from login, and not the time of last activity. If you have a test site you could test this by setting a 15 minute timeout and working for a while (or not, if my theory is correct ;) )

Assuming I'm write, you're going to have to assess site usage and make a judgement call about the timeout. How common is it for a visitor to spend 3 hours at your site? If it is quite common for someone to spend 3 hours reading, and then want to post a comment, or several 20 minute periods reading over three hours, and then want to make a comment, you are probably going to have to extend the timeout period to something safer like 8 or 12 hours.

Who besides you is worried about others viewing the site with their credentials? Everyone should be, but most people will have far less to lose. For you and other site admins, authors or moderators, getting into the habit of explicitly logging out when you're done would avoid problems associated with a lengthy timeout.
_________
bob-thompson.com