i know the freshness will display “-1 years” if your UTC offset is incorrect. in my case, it IS correct and i’ve verified that the time on our mysql server is correct. this started happening randomly about two months ago. when it happens it will happen for all posts made within a certain time range then will go away after 15-30 seconds or so. it doesn’t happen with every new post, we seem to go through spells of it from time to time. i’ve read in other posts that there are other reasons this can happen, can anyone explain?

thanks.

josh–

[@chrishajer Participant 15 years, 6 months ago]

I’ve never seen it happen randomly. Is the database on a different machine than the web server?

[@josh_ Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

no, it’s on the same machine.

[@johnhiler Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

Is there a particular time of day or night that this bug tends to pop up? If so, maybe we can narrow it down enough to get a clue to what’s causing it…

[@josh_ Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

nope, it just happens randomly on any post made within <1 minute.

[@chrishajer Participant 15 years, 6 months ago]

Can you post the forum URL so we might see what’s happening?

[@josh_ Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

you’d wouldn’t see it unless you were watching the forum all day. the window for catching them is pretty short. i just saw it happen on all posts <8 minutes, then refreshed and it was back to normal.

[@chrishajer Participant 15 years, 6 months ago]

So, the time is only displayed inaccurately for a little while, then it displays the correct elapsed time?

How can we recreate the problem? Maybe it will happen on other forums too. I don’t think I’ve ever watched those times that closely before, especially if it corrects itself in a short while.

[@chrishajer Participant 15 years, 6 months ago]

So, every post that was made in an 8 minute span displayed -1 years for the time, but after a refresh, the elapsed time was accurate? How many posts and how many topics?

[@josh_ Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

i’m seeing two symptoms right now. the first is that posts made within a certain window of time display as “-1 years” of freshness. this is inconsequential however, and the posts soon display their proper time.

the second symptom is when the posts get the wrong time stamps. i just watched a thread get started and the second time stamp was actually OLDER than the first post. i confirmed this by looking at the post_time of each post. which post was stamped incorrectly i don’t know, but it sure seems like it’s happening within a certain window of time when a post is first made, i.e. maybe the first post is getting a post_time that’s somehow a few minutes ahead of what it should be.

[@chrishajer Participant 15 years, 6 months ago]

That’s why I asked if the database was on a different machine. I could imagine a situation where the time on the two machines is off, or if there were network traffic, which seems like it could cause something like this. But if the database and web server are the same machine, I am out of ideas right now.

[@citizenkeith Participant 15 years, 3 months ago]

I have been experiencing this problem as well, and I believe my database is on a different machine (using Media Temple).

How would I fix the problem?

[@josh_ Member 15 years, 2 months ago]

i’m trying to figure out what part of the code is making the time queries and from where? are they requesting the time from the db server or the webserver? my host is trying to help us figure this out and it seems like there’s one server in the cluster somewhere that is a few minutes out of sync with the rest.