Posts Not Showing UP

Interesting. I just tried to reproduce the error, which I've never had, in a test thread ( www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...ndex.php?topic=32727 ) without success.

Is there a particular way in which the UTF-8 characters need to be entered/a browser configuration for UTF-8 that might matter?

I'm guessing the bug was fixed before you started posting. Thanks Matt for sorting this out and getting it fixed!

Woohoo! Thank you!

Awesome, thanks for the observations all, and for the help getting them patched up Matt. Please continue to post here if you have issues.

I can confirm that the problem seems fixed (or at least reduced).

Several weeks ago I tried to update a link in this old post and had the post eaten:

www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi....msg104290#msg104290

I just tried again and my modification was posted successfully.

Good work!

Things are still not all well in the TAY software! There is a major display bug now visible in many older posts, especially all of those which contain 2 or more consecutive spaces. In the case of multiple spaces, every other space is being rendered as a "square box" symbol (on iOS) or as a "black diamond with question mark" (on Mac OS), as are non-ASCII characters like degree signs.

I can see this problem in any browser I use (checked with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari on Max OS X, and also Chrome and Safari on iOS). I have no idea whether other OSes have this issue or not. The problem does not appear to be occurring in new posts made now like this post, but does appear to affect all older posts to some extent.

Basically, this renders unreadable all of my weather and snowfall posts over the last decade, anything where I have posted nicely-formatted telemetry data, and also affects most of my dozens of Rainier TRs which include that day's Rainier NWS rec forecast, which also is formatted using multiple consecutive spaces. Posts by all other users appear to be affected similarly too, if they contain multiple consecutive spaces or non-ASCII characters.

Examples of posts rendered unreadable by this bug:
Mt Rainier Paradise reaches 200" snow depth (2014)
How unusual is the current low PNW snowpack?

I think that this bug appeared recently during whatever fix was implemented to try to solve the disappearing posts issue, but it may have existed before that since the software update which caused the disappearing posts issue, I don't know for sure. But clearly the current state is not an acceptable solution if all older posts with multiple consecutive spaces and formatted columns of data are rendered unreadable by it.

New posts appear to be unaffected by the issue, as multiple spaces appear fine like this:  (there are 2 spaces to the left of this)
Or this:          (there are 10 spaces to the left of this)
Even non-ASCII characters like this degree sign (°) render fine.
Or even a part of the Rainier forecast:
MOUNT RAINIER RECREATIONAL FORECAST
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SEATTLE WA
415 AM PST WED DEC 17 2014

TEMPERATURE AND WIND FORECASTS FOR SELECTED LOCATIONS.

                       WED    WED    THU    THU    FRI
                            NIGHT         NIGHT

SUMMIT   (14411 FT)      1      1      8      2     -7
                     SW 20  SW 25   W 50  SW 60   W 45

CAMP MUIR(10188 FT)     18     15     19     20     10
                     SW 20  SW 20  SW 25  SW 50   W 35

PARADISE  (5420 FT)     35     29     36     32     33
                      CALM   W  5   W 10   W 10   W 15

LONGMIRE  (2700 FT)     40     33     40     35     39
                      CALM   CALM   CALM   CALM   CALM

++ TEMPERATURES AND WIND FOR THE SUMMIT AND CAMP MUIR ARE AVERAGE
   CONDITIONS EXPECTED IN THE FREE AIR AT THOSE ELEVATIONS.
++ TEMPERATURES FOR PARADISE AND LONGMIRE ARE THE EXPECTED HIGHS AND
   LOWS. WIND IS THE AVERAGE WIND EXPECTED DURING THAT PERIOD.


Even my signature at the bottom of every single post was affected by this bug (it contained 2 pairs of spaces), so as a test I decided to edit it now, by deleting the pairs of spaces and retyping each pair new. The problem in my signature was fixed by this test.

It also appears that older posts can be fixed by modifying and reposting from a saved backup copy, but that is not a reasonable method for fixing hundreds of posts. See the tests I just did in this thread from September, I was able to reply (#2) and post the same data properly, as well as edit my original reply from Sept (#1) to fix the rendering issue:

NWAC telemetry bug/missing data?

So reply #1 now contains both the original data table which is rendered unreadable, as well as the same data table pasted in now which is rendering properly. Truly bizarre.

Even more bizarre, the multiple spaces problem only occurs in most older posts, but not in all of them! The issue with non-ASCII characters like degree signs does appear to occur in all older posts which I have glanced at now.
Examples from 2 TRs earlier this year:
Apr 29 + May 1, 2014, Mt Rainier, Muir to Bridge? (degree signs and Rainier forecast are rendered unreadable)
April 7, 2014, Rainier, Muir to Nisqually Bridge? (degree signs are rendered unreadable, BUT the Rainier forecast looks fine!)

Hopefully this will provide enough info for you to fix this serious problem, Matt and Marcus. Thanks.

Amar, one thing that seems possible is that the character encoding scheme was changed during the backend software upgrade. So your old posts were persisted with a different character encoding than what's being used now to display them.

Or maybe it's just aliens who have been cloaking their spaceships in the lenticulars common to Mt. Rainier and using their superior powers to flip the bits of your posts about their secret Earth base deep inside the mountain.

Amar, thank you for the detailed bug report. The default character encoding changed during the software upgrade, resulting in new posts being encoded using UTF-8, while old posts were encoded using ISO-8859-1. I've temporarily downgraded the software to an older version that does not have this change. This will fix all older posts as well as the missing post issue, but unfortunately this also means some posts that were made after the initial upgrade (Oct 24, 2014) may now have similar display issues.

It will be possible to fix all of these issues, but it's not a quick fix. Working on getting this fixed as soon as possible.

Thanks for the quick response and temporary fix, Matt. At least most of the older posts appear to be readable now for the time being. This one ( NWAC telemetry bug/missing data? ) that I test-edited earlier today now has 2 different encoding issues in different parts, though. But it's not a very important post.

Aliens are still circling.  I get "Session timed out while posting."  I have heard that others are having the same problem.

*Update--- I restarted my desktop and it work fine. Mobile also works fine.

Aliens are still circling.  I get "Session timed out while posting."  I have heard that others are having the same problem.

*Update--- I restarted my desktop and it work fine. Mobile also works fine.

Same with me

I've had a few folks mention this, thanks.

Andy, does "same with me" mean that you're having the problem and a restart fixed it? Or just that you're also having the problem?

"Your session timed out while posting. Please try to re-submit your message."

has been going on for a couple of days.
And then, when trying to log out there's often

"Session Verification failed. Please try logging out and back in again, and then try again."
which is pretty funny because, well, I can't log out...

Have also heard of several others getting this. Clearing the browser cache seems to help temporarily, but it's a recurring problem.

I've had a few folks mention this, thanks.

Andy, does "same with me" mean that you're having the problem and a restart fixed it?  Or just that you're also having the problem?

Having the problem and once I solved it by restarting my computer; but logging out of Safari wouldn't help, neither did putting the computer to sleep; I could log out of TAY but when I went back of course I would still be signed it (or was signed in automatically).

"Your session timed out while posting. Please try to re-submit your message."

has been going on for a couple of days.
And then, when trying to log out there's often

"Session Verification failed. Please try logging out and back in again, and then try again."
which is pretty funny because, well, I can't log out...

I just experienced both these problems.

I tried logging out, but couldn't because of the second message above.

Then I tried deleting cookies from turns-all-year.com. (I'm using Firefox.) This didn't fix the problem either, initially.

I'm a little vague on the exact sequence, but I did something like:

1. Delete cookies
2. Shutdown browser
3. Startup browser and verify that I'm not logged in to TAY
4. Login to TAY
5. Logout of TAY
6. Shutdown and startup browser
7. Succesfully posted this message

I may have deleted cookies more than once during the sequence above (don't quite remember). I didn't restart my machine.

Things seem to be back to normal, for now.

With Firefox on Android, I'm getting the same problem today.

Deleted all browser cookies -- no longer appear to be logged in. Still get the "log out and then back in again" message when attempting to log out.
Deleted all browser cookies again -- same response.
Installed a fresh version of Chrome on Android -- logged in, logging out gets "log out and then back in again" error.
Back to firefox -- dumped cookies, logged in, browsed for a bit, then attempted to log out, same result.

Posting this from a long-ago login session on my desktop.

I'm a little vague on the exact sequence, but I did something like:

1. Delete cookies
2. Shutdown browser
3. Startup browser and verify that I'm not logged in to TAY
4. Login to TAY
5. Logout of TAY
6. Shutdown and startup browser
7. Succesfully posted this message

I may have deleted cookies more than once during the sequence above (don't quite remember). I didn't restart my machine.

Things seem to be back to normal, for now.

I just had this problem again, and I was again able to fix it by a combination of:

* Deleting cookies (for TAY only)
* Shutting down browser (Firefox for me)
* Logging out from TAY

Again, the correct order of these actions is a little uncertain. The goal seems to be to get TAY into an initial state in which you are logged out and your browser has no TAY cookies. From this state, if you start up your browser and login to TAY, you can post normally again.

Let me see whether I can reply without this routine.
Looks like I can - did not work few days back.

Using Safari 8.0.2 on OS 10.10.1:

I could not post a reply so I followed the above instructions:
-delete cookie for turns-all-year.com
-log out
-log in

The first time I was not able to post, got a reply: The last posting from your IP was less than 10 seconds ago...
The second time i was able to post a reply
Trying for the third time now...

It seems this resolved the problem for me. Hopefully it will last.

It seems this resolved the problem for me. Hopefully it will last.

It won't.
(and I'm habitually an optimist!)
This (and other) problems have been rearing their ugly little heads for months now...

Again this morning while responding to a PM I got the
"Your session timed out while posting. Please try to re-submit your message."
And that was with a blank browser slate. No cookies. No cache.

Sure we can try to circumvent these issues with time consuming self fixes, but in the long run it will simply deter people from posting and participating.

I'll try this. Didn't work last week.

Sure we can try to circumvent these issues with time consuming self fixes, but in the long run it will simply deter people from posting and participating.

Agreed. My purpose in reporting work-arounds is twofold:

1. Help other users get around the problem

and more important:

2. Provide clues for the administrators to fix the problem

I ran into the problem again today. Once again I fixed it by a combination of deleting TAY cookies, shutting down my browser (Firefox), and logging out and back in again to TAY. I'm still unclear on what sequence does the trick. It seems I've done something slightly different each time I've seen the problem, but so far I've always done all of these things.

Just testing if this still works for me.

If the problem lies with cookies, here is what the TAY cookies look like on my side.

totally agree with you Lowell.


(it took me a while to post that because my initial attempt once again gave me a: "Session verification failed. Please try logging out and back in again, and then try again." twice. frustrating...

The above is when posting works just fine. If the problem returns I will try to remember to look at the cookies again, hopefully a difference will show that might point toward the problem. And I agree with the sentiment expressed by cumulus.

this time it posted. Seems the only thing I did differently is that I logged in to TAY immediately (before going to this thread), as before I went to this thread and then logged in.

Cleared cache and cookies both times.

Testing from iOS.

While posting a reply to Logging Tour Vert Geek-ery Questions I got the session timed out. I took a snapshot of my TAY cookies. (see below).
This time I just cleared the cache and the cookies, I did not log out/in and the problem was solved.

To add to the confusion, when I clicked on the link directly to page 3 here it showed Marcus as the last post at 1224 which doesn't reflect the post from RC at 1237.