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Philip Perkins

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Same here. I notice the forums are now running on SMF 2.0 RC4... Maybe it's a problem with that version? On the Simple Machines site they now say, "While 2.0 RC4 has proved to be relatively stable, there have been several issues found and fixed since its release. Therfore, it has been deemed prudent to make another release candidate available for testing." And they go on to talk about RC5....

Maybe RC5 fixes the problem?

Jim

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Nothing unusual happening with Firefox 3.6.13 (Windows 7-64).  The problem may relate to a cookie that is set by SMF.  For all the people who are observing this, what operating system and browser version are you running?  Have you recently installed operating system updates or security software updates?  Can you check to see if jwsound is setting an SMF cookie?  Have you tried a different browser to see if it behaves the same way?

Laurence

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Nothing unusual happening with Firefox 3.6.13 (Windows 7-64).  The problem may relate to a cookie that is set by SMF.  For all the people who are observing this, what operating system and browser version are you running?  Have you recently installed operating system updates or security software updates?  Can you check to see if jwsound is setting an SMF cookie?  Have you tried a different browser to see if it behaves the same way?

Laurence

Nothing has been changed here. Same settings as before the problem started. I'm using IE 8 on Windows 7. Have no clue as to how to check for SMF cookie.

Eric

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Have you tested with Firefox?  To see cookies in IE8, from the Tools menu or Tools drop-down at the upper right, select Internet Options, then the General Tab and under "Browsing History", click Settings, then click View Objects or View Files.

Laurence

Ok, I followed your instructions but don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for. I see lots of cookies for other things like my bank but nothing that is even close to this site as far as I can tell. As far as other things like Firefox I don't know what it does or how to use it.

Eric

Eric

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You should be able to identify a jwsound.net cookie.  Actually, I think you should have 2.  If none exist, then that's an important clue.  Firefox is a browser, like IE, Chrome, Safari and Opera.  Since no browser is completely standards compliant, many people have more than one so they have options when things aren't right.  In this case, you could test JWSound with another browser, determining whether it was just an IE problem or, if the same problem occurred in the other browser, then maybe something else was causing the issue.  If Firefox saves the cookie, for example, and IE doesn't, then one can begin to research that.

Laurence

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Alerting Jeff to this problem was totally worthy. We've done that now. I don't know if the issue is only related to browser cookies. I'd guess there's more than that. There's recently been a bunch of spambot attacks on various web forums and mailing lists. It seems the log-out problem is related to exploits of a SMF security flaw, but I haven't looked into it all that deeply.

SMF recently released 2.5 RC5 (and a patch for RC4) that seems to address the problem. Anyone who wants to know more can poke around here:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php

But I don't think there's much we can do. We need to wait for Jeff W. to decide if updating this forum's software makes sense at the moment.

Thanks,

Jim

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You should be able to identify a jwsound.net cookie.  Actually, I think you should have 2.  If none exist, then that's an important clue.  Firefox is a browser, like IE, Chrome, Safari and Opera.  Since no browser is completely standards compliant, many people have more than one so they have options when things aren't right.  In this case, you could test JWSound with another browser, determining whether it was just an IE problem or, if the same problem occurred in the other browser, then maybe something else was causing the issue.  If Firefox saves the cookie, for example, and IE doesn't, then one can begin to research that.

Laurence

There is no JWsound cookie listed. Another problem I noticed is that the home page recognizes me but this page doesn't and I have to sign in to post a reply.

Eric

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Alerting Jeff to this problem was totally worthy. We've done that now.

But I don't think there's much we can do. We need to wait for Jeff W. to decide if updating this forum's software makes sense at the moment.

Thanks,

Jim

I am trying to figure out these things but since I am working on a movie right now I have had less time to devote to solving these issues. I appreciate that Laurence is helping out and certainly I will make the effort to update the forum software.

-  Jeff Wexler

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The info is scattered over several SMF forum folders, Laurence. Here's a Reader's Digest version:

Several to many other SMF users are having the same unexpectedly-logged-out problems we're having here on Jeff's forum. Most of those people appear to be on SMF 2.0 RC3 and RC4 (ie- late beta versions of SMF 2.0, which is not yet finalized). Seems like it's a fairly new problem. It's semi-obliquely mentioned in the change log for RC5 thusly:

-Users were logged out when other failed attempts to login were made (Load.php)

OK, that's not perfectly clear, but it appears to tie into the mentions that spambots are trying to break into SMF installations (like Jeff's forum) by logging in as real users. Makes sense for SMF to be semi-oblique so they don't tip off the bad guys about how their patch works.

Perhaps certain browsers provide a more-promising gateway for the spambots than other browsers; I didn't see anything suggesting that, but I didn't look that hard. I also didn't see anything mentioning issues with cookies; again, I could have missed that.

I've been checking out various web-forum apps for a project of mine (totally non-competitive with Jeff's forum here). So talking to my IT friends I've learned a bit about the increasing aggression of spambots. There was a recent effort made against vBulletin, I'm sure we've all see the attacks on WordPress comments; Now it looks like SMF is a current target.

Again, it looks like there isn't much we can do right now. But you know, having to log back in to access Jeff's forum is much better than having to wade through tons of spam. So I'll deal with it.

Hopefully things will all stabilize and Jeff will be able to update the software (or install the RC4 security patch) when the time is appropriate...And to be clear, I don't know if that time is now. Could be there are other issues with the latest versions of SMF. And of course, Jeff is busy.

OK, enough blathering from me. Sorry I couldn't provide a definitive link from SMF, but as I said, looks like they haven't provided one.

HTH,

Jim

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Yuh, it's really hard to track down and get any sense of what's going on.  So far, 6 of 2,500 members of the forum have reported the problem and only 2 have indicated what browser they are using... so that makes it pretty hard to draw conclusions.  The only way to know if RC5 addresses this issue is to install RC5... at the risk of introducing more serious issues.  Jeff, if you do the upgrade, make a backup copy of everything in this folder on the server, just in case you're not happy with the results.

Laurence

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So just now I came to the forum--it recognized me--said hello.  I went to read a post and it CHANGED me to a guest during that process.

Very weird.  I checked the forum in FF as suggested, I do have JW cookies.

phil p

That's the same problem I had with IE8. I have no JW cookies but this morning all seems to be back to normal for me.

Eric

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Yuh, it's really hard to track down and get any sense of what's going on.  So far, 6 of 2,500 members of the forum have reported the problem and only 2 have indicated what browser they are using... so that makes it pretty hard to draw conclusions.

I haven't posted my experiences because it hasn't been a big issue for me and because I didn't think I had anything to add to the discussion. However, if an informal count is being made, I should speak up: I am also experiencing sign-on abnormalities.

I am using Firefox version 3.6.13 on a Mac running 10.5.8. Although I've checked the box to stay signed on always, of late I've had to renew my log-in at irregular intervals. Moreover, I also notice that the posting order sometimes flips for no discernible reason. That is, sometimes the page displays the most recent post at the top, sometimes at the bottom.

David

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