Forum:Technical issue - logged in status weirdness

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I've noticed that once I've logged in, going to some pages (and not always the same ones, nor consistently after a particular pattern of activity that I can discern) when the page comes up, the header at the upper right will show "Log in/Create account" again. Refreshing the page corrects the problem. I don't think it's a browser cache issue at my end, though, as it happens with Opera, Firefox and IE, and just as often on pages I've loaded for the first time as opposed to pages I've visited before. Just thought I'd put this out there; if an admin would like me to see if I can detect a pattern, I'll see if I can track my page visits over a few days. If you'd like screen captures of this behaviour, just say so and I'll see about doing that as well. Thanks! --GingerM ^{(Leave me a message)} 01:06, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

This is a cache issue on our end. Unfortunately Squid doesn't seem to be responding in the way it's meant to for users with cookies. We're moving to a new server, and a new caching system, in the near future. For now, I'd try doing a forced-refresh if you suspect an issue. --GreenReaper^(talk) 01:17, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Related to this - today I noticed that the template {{char-stub}} includes a link to an image which doesn't appear to exist File:Puzzlepiece32.png. I clicked on the red link, only to have Wikifur inform me I needed to be logged in, except that I was already logged in, as I am now. The user info at the top right of the page showed the login link. Even repeatedly refreshing the page didn't fix the problem. --GingerM ^{(Leave me a message)} 20:27, 2 April 2011 (CEST)

Update - just to see what would happened, I clicked on File:Puzzlepiece32.png which shows up as a blue link here; it has a licence but says "No image by this name." So then I opened the template where the image link was red-linked and it gave me the "You must be logged in" etc. Then I clicked on the "Log In" link at the top right, entered my userid and password, and it came right back with "You must be logged in" etc. When I then clicked on the Wikifur Central link on the left sidebar, it resumed showing me as logged in with my contribs, talk page, etc. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark :-) --GingerM ^{(Leave me a message)} 20:27, 2 April 2011 (CEST)

The image issue is happening yet again. I was having a look at my User page and noticed that some of the user boxes are showing the images/logos as being red-linked and missing, and when I click on the links Wikifur tells me that I have to be logged in, although I already am. Now, however, when I click to log in again, I get an error about cookies needing to be enabled, despite the fact I was already logged in. I click the login again, it goes through this time, then when I go back to the user page... the image links are red-linked and around we go again :-) I'm beginning to wonder if I've broken something :-) --GingerM ^{(Leave me a message)} 23:39, 6 April 2011 (CEST)

Examples of what I'm talking about: File:Red_link_weirdness.png and File:Red_link_weirdness_2.png --GingerM ^{(Leave me a message)} 23:49, 6 April 2011 (CEST)

There are caching issues affecting some users, compounded by what appears to be a bug in the shared image handler. I intend to fix this, but I am very limited on time right now. I will try to look at it later tonight. For now if you see this, you may be able to force it to work for an individual image by adding ?action=purge to the URL of the image's page (e.g. http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Whatever.png?action=purge - you may have to hover over the redlink to find out the name ) and reloading that page, followed by purging the template/article that contains it. If the file originated on pool.wikifur.com you should purge the image page there as well. --GreenReaper^(talk) 00:06, 7 April 2011 (CEST)

Thanks very much! I'll do that - and if it would help, I can try a couple of different browsers to see if it's specific to one. --GingerM ^{(Leave me a message)} 00:17, 7 April 2011 (CEST)

Browser choice might matter for the "appearing logged-out" issue. I've seen some strange situations where pages which had non-caching directives were still cached in Firefox. It shouldn't make any difference for the images themselves. --GreenReaper^(talk) 00:20, 7 April 2011 (CEST)

For what it's worth in the way of diagnostic information, the "appearing logged out" behaviour is happening for me in 3 different browsers: Firefox 4.0, Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome, all under Windows 7 32-bit. I hope that's useful in some way. I don't have my Linux stick with me, otherwise I'd try it under that, to see if maybe it's an operating system problem. --GingerM ^{(Leave me a message)} 00:33, 7 April 2011 (CEST)

OK. I've found and fixed at least one issue; perhaps this was the source of all of them. The cache was programmed to detect an image extension or CSS/JS extension and assume that as a request for an image, it could strip off the user's cookie, thus increasing the cache hit ratio. Unfortunately, the URLs for both the file upload and regular file pages end with a file extension . . . I've told it not to do that if the URL starts with /w (including /wiki). --GreenReaper^(talk) 04:52, 13 April 2011 (CEST)

Shared images on other language editions should now be fixed as well. --GreenReaper^(talk) 02:29, 17 April 2011 (CEST)