Okay, so when I came on today the time on the boards was one hour behind, under board settings the box "Auto correct DST?" is checked. I refreashed the page, and then the time was right, I refreashed again and then it was an hour off. Just about every time that I refreash the time changing either to the right time, or to an hour behind.

What do I do?

Little I'm guessing, it most likely has something to do on the server end with some time function on that end (either the software of the server itself) not being up to snuff on the new DST dates.

If you find the wonky dates utterly annoying you can turn off the auto DST on your end via the control panel.

Control panel > board settings > De-select Auto-correct DST > select the check box that says "is daylight savings time in effect?"

Pro's it fixes the board time settings

Con's you will have to manually switch it off next fall

Steve

Yeah... a lot of software hasn't kept up with the changes. We are running the latest of everything though...

Though, mine appears to be working...

I'm not sure if this is related or not, but I suspect it is. Over the last few weeks I noticed that the times shown for article postings were sometimes a couple of hours out from when they were posted. It's hard to describe now because most of the time I thought it was just my brain short-circuiting, but it did seem inconsistent. Sometimes for example I'd post a reply and a few minutes later be looking at the forum topic list and see that the article I'd posted five minutes ago was now 1 or 2 hours old.

If I logged out so I saw the server timezone times it all looked okay (UTC-5 [EST] I think).

My settings were for UTC+1 (Europe).

Eventually to avoid the headache I set my timezone to UTC and so far I've not noticed a similar problem.

Oddly, while I was having the problem that Kurt discussed with DST when I first came on today, it seems to have worked itself out for regular forum posts and topics. HOWEVER, my PMs are still showing up listed as an hour off from when they were really sent/received.

Also, I've noticed for the last several days that the board is about 2 minutes ahead of the time the clock on my computer has. If I post this at 9:03am by my clock, it'll show up as 9:05am.

Obviously I don't particularly care about the 2 minute thing, but I figured I'd mention it.

-Kevin

I'd suspect this is a symptom of either your PC or the server not being synchronised with an NTP (Network Time Protocol) server. Over a few days the real-time clock in many PCs will drift quite a way unless it is resync-ed. The NTP servers are synchronised to Atomic clocks at places like NIST and Greenwich.

It goes back when you hit refresh.

Will clearing the cache help?

In theory if the pages are dynamically generated and PHP doesn't send an HTTP response EXPIRES header the page should be refreshed every time. I checked the HTTP response and see that the server is setting an expires value, but in the cookie:



It is possible that a combination of the local browser cache and a transparent proxy cache (such as apache mod_cache) could be partially responsible.

For the issue to be cache-related though, I'd expect to see the server returning some

responses which would cause the browser to use it's local copy.

I find that if I change my time setting in the control panel to Atlantic time instead of Eastern, it displays the correct time.

I also decided to check it at my site and the time zone function isn't available, but it does show the correct time.

Jan

Use Windows Server 2003 or 2008 and you won't have all these problems that Apache causes.

It's the forum I.P.Board PHP code that is at issue, if it's anything to do with the server. As it seems so random and only seems to be noticed by a few people I suspect it could be a by-product of ISPs running transparent HTTP caching proxies to reduce bandwidth demand.

I was only teasing about Win2k3/8. I'm really very OS and web-server agnostic. Whatever works best is what you should use.

Yeah, you had to be

I've re-enabled my settings to UTC+1 (Madrid, etc.) and it has "Automatically adjust DST" set, so I'll try to maintain a careful watch on it and see if I can reproduce the issue and locate the source - server, caching proxy, or browser.

And bingo! it happens immediately. Time displayed on your previous post #12 went from

UTC/GMT: Yesterday, 10:41PM

to

UTC+1/CET: Today, 12:41AM

If I disable "Auto correct DST?" it shows:

UTC+1/CET: Yesterday, 11:41 PM

So it looks like the PHP code is getting confused over when daylight savings times start in certain locations. Here's a chart of European summer time periods. That shows daylight savings doesn't start until March 30th for CET.

Is there a pattern anyone can detect that might suggest if this is one of those problems related to being in the GMT/UTC minus versus plus range?

It looks like an IPB bug. At least, other sites using it have users reporting the same symptoms.

E.g. DST Issue?

I wonder if it could be caused by the DST move by the U.S.A. where it has been brought forward to the 2nd Sunday in March? If the server is switching based only on the start/end time in the server's timezone rather than the timezone of the user, it would rather neatly explain this, although if the bug was definitely happening before March 9th then you can shoot that idea down!

It can't be, because we in the Southern Hemisphere are completely different to the Northern Hemisphere in that respect. We're about to come OFF daylight saving time.

My suspicion is that it is trying to adjust for the SERVER being on daylight saving, and is getting confused as to whether the server time includes or excludes DST. If the USA changed their normal time, some parts of the code may have picked up the new start time and others (incorrectly coded) haven't.

MSFT issued a patch for this. I wonder if Apache or IP.Board did the same thing?

It may be in the way that the controls are set up. I went into my AdminCP and found that my site was set to automatically change. But I did have to make a couple of adjustments.

It is possible the server administrator hasn't installed the updated locale timezone files. That would worry me since they were available for most distributions last year.

I don't know Joe well enough to comment on his abilities.

GA is using the latest version 2.3.4, as am I.

Seriously, over a time issue that is easily fixed by turning off the auto DST?

If it is a bug in the program there is little the admionistration can do except report it to IPB.

He certainly does a good job of keeping GA running. But I was asked a question and I didn't know the answer to it. What else was I to say?

Fair enough.

Lets all agree on a few points.

1) auto correct DST is a software function

2) Users set their local timezone, if they don't GMT -5 is the default (US eastern)

3) Congress changed the DST dates effective this year

4) the problem presented itself on 3/9/08 the new "spring forward" date

the DST issue is not a php issue, nor is it a server issue, it is simply an overlooked piece of code. Is it effecting the way the board operates? No. Yo can turn off the auto correct DST in board settings via your controls if it bothers you to see the posting times an hour off, or you can wait two weeks for the traditional DST date and the problem will resolve itself according to the programming. Other then that it is a minor bug that IPB probably will not be all that worried about until the next update.

and I apologize, Tristan's post read more as a statement then it did a question to me.

Steve

That seems reasonable Steve. In fact it's what I already did. I left auto-correct on and changed my timezone so that I'm at GMT/UTC -0400. When the traditional DST kicks in I'll just set my timezone back to GMT/UTC -0500.

It was understandable that some people were confused why things were suddenly off by an hour and wanted to ask about it.

If other people are confused they'll find this thread, see your post and know exactly what to do and why. Simple. Thanks.