Bugs? Problems? Report them here!

[Chris Peterson (temp)]

I've been having a lot of problems with Starship Asterisk* lately. I can't open the page at all, or I can't post anything, or I can't edit my posts.

Ann

I'm posting as a guest, because I can't log on at all. From the login page, after I submit, it just hangs on a TLS handshake and eventually times out. My email links to current posts do the same thing. I can directly access the forum topics, however. Same problem with Firefox or Chrome- the browser won't establish a secure connection. Cleared all the Asterisk cookies, cleared the cache. No help.

-Chris

[Chris Peterson]

I've been having a lot of problems with Starship Asterisk* lately. I can't open the page at all, or I can't post anything, or I can't edit my posts.

Ann

I'm posting as a guest, because I can't log on at all. From the login page, after I submit, it just hangs on a TLS handshake and eventually times out. My email links to current posts do the same thing. I can directly access the forum topics, however. Same problem with Firefox or Chrome- the browser won't establish a secure connection. Cleared all the Asterisk cookies, cleared the cache. No help.

-Chris

Now I'm logged in. The problem seems related to the configuration of HTTPS on the site. My bookmark to Asterisk has the link as HTTP. If I use that, I'm shown as not logged in, and can't log in. Once I changed to HTTPS, things seem to be working. That means something is misconfigured on the server. If it requires HTTPS, it should do that on its own, regardless of the protocol specified at the browser end.

EDIT/UPDATE: however, anything I post, including this, takes me to a server error page that says a secure connection couldn't be established. But once I go back to Asterisk, my post has been accepted.

[geckzilla]

Yeah, I just turned off secure cookies. THAT didn't work. I actually got stuck unable to get logged in and had to modify the database directly to switch the option back off again.

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Yeah, I just turned off secure cookies.

THAT didn't work.

I actually got stuck unable to get logged in and had to modify the database directly to switch the option back off again.

[rstevenson]

And to confuse the issue further... for the past two days I have not been logged out. Everything seems to be working as expected. (I see the https in the address bar at all times.)

Rob

[geckzilla]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[rstevenson]

And this morning, for no reason I can discern, I found I was logged out on the Board Index page, which has never happened before. This is after a few days of not being logged out unexpectedly.

Obviously my Mac has been infected with aliens.

Rob

[Chris Peterson]

And this morning, for no reason I can discern, I found I was logged out on the Board Index page, which has never happened before. This is after a few days of not being logged out unexpectedly.

Since the previous experiment involved a change in how cookies were delivered, I'd recommend clearing both your cookies and your cache.

Obviously my Mac has been infected with aliens.

Macs are aliens.

[geckzilla]

Out of curiosity, are you taking your computer to other places where you would be assigned a different IP and then browsing Asterisk? Sessions are validated by the first three segments of an IP, currently. If any of those numbers change, a logout might occur.

[Chris Peterson]

Out of curiosity, are you taking your computer to other places where you would be assigned a different IP and then browsing Asterisk? Sessions are validated by the first three segments of an IP, currently. If any of those numbers change, a logout might occur.

Might. I use a VPN, and my IP and even country of connection changes all the time, but I don't get logged out of Asterisk. Something more must be going on to keep me attached.

[geckzilla]

Out of curiosity, are you taking your computer to other places where you would be assigned a different IP and then browsing Asterisk? Sessions are validated by the first three segments of an IP, currently. If any of those numbers change, a logout might occur.

Might. I use a VPN, and my IP and even country of connection changes all the time, but I don't get logged out of Asterisk. Something more must be going on to keep me attached.

Yeah, I've used a laptop from home and then gone to a hotel and had the same login going. I'm really unsure what's going on with Rob's computer.

[rstevenson]

I almost always view the Asterisk from my home iMac, which doesn't even move from room to room. So it's not an IP issue -- unless my WIFI modem is disconnecting and reconnecting to the 'net according to its own needs.

This morning, more than 48 hours after the last de-log episode, I find I am suitably logged in, as always used to be the case. This means my browser is doing what it should by remembering the Asterisk and making sure I'm correctly connected to it. (I say that because I just did a restart for an unrelated issue.)

If this continues I'll try removing cookies and clearing the cache manually from here, rather than using your link to clear the Asterisk cookie. Perhaps my browser doesn't cooperate with that way of doing things.

Rob

[rstevenson]

Logged out again this morning. :-0

So I tried going into Safari Prefs > Privacy > manage sites and deleting the cookie there, but I didn't find an asterisk cookie at all. I found an apod one and deleted that, then came back here and logged in again. Onward and upward, I hope.

Rob

[geckzilla]

I think there are tracking cookies for apod.nasa.gov, so if you deleted those then it definitely won't help, but of course won't hurt either. Since asterisk is at apod.com, if you deleted the apod.com ones, that might help. The only other thing I can think of that you could do is to temporarily use a different browser and see if it logs you out too. There might be some setting somewhere in Safari causing all cookies/sessions to be automatically dumped after 48 hours or something.

[rstevenson]

When I went back to Firefox and loaded the Asterisk, I was immediately logged in and have stayed that way for the past couple of days. I stopped using FF some months ago due to stability problems, but it has been updated and seems to be fine, so I'll likely stick with it. It was my preferred browser for years and I don't mind reverting to it. Strangely, Safari is essentially stock other than an ad/pop-up blocker, while FF is loaded with a variety of add-ons I'd needed over the years, so it's hard to see why Safari is the one with the problem. But nanny Apple does make some peculiar decisions sometimes, and doesn't necessarily tell their users about them, so I can't say I'm surprised.

Rob

[geckzilla]

Good luck. I went searching for Safari-specific fixes, and only found things like deleting all passwords, all website data, manually deleting cache files, etc. Couldn't find a simple switch to flip.

[kenkahn]

Starting around 8/1/2018 whenever APOD tries to load a new background image it fails with

Background not updated because the APOD image is not a supported image type (jpg,gif,png). The image url is
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1807/So ... s_2310.jpg

I can set the background image directly from the web page. I'm fairly sure I didn't do anything on my end to change any display setting that would result in this. This is running APOD from Windows 10 system on a Lenovo laptop.

[BDanielMayfield]

The Astrobites website is down. They must be working on fixing an issue, since earlier each time I would try opening up an article there I would get a warning message about the website not being secure.

Bruce

[bystander]

The Astrobites website is down. They must be working on fixing an issue, since earlier each time I would try opening up an article there I would get a warning message about the website not being secure.

Bruce

The site isn't down, but their security certificate is expired. It is safe to override the warning if you wish to do so.

[Dougthedog]

keep getting the following message "Could not update image from APOD site"

[agulesin]

Hi everyone,

Not sure if it's just me but I have problems using the Next and Back arrows when I'm viewing APOD on my mobile phone - the > and < symbols are just too small for my fat fingers...

Would it be possible to add the words NEXT & BACK so that it's easier to select them?

Screenshot

Thanks to all involved for keeping us fed with wonderful images!

[BDanielMayfield]

Hi everyone,

Not sure if it's just me but I have problems using the Next and Back arrows when I'm viewing APOD on my mobile phone - the > and < symbols are just too small for my fat fingers...

Would it be possible to add the words NEXT & BACK so that it's easier to select them?

tmp-cam-966800270334374941.jpg

Thanks to all involved for keeping us fed with wonderful images!

That change would help me too, good suggestion.

[bystander]

The "Discuss" link @ apod.nasa.gov seems to be broke

http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=190330

The APOD from March 30th, 2019 probably isn't ready yet or you may have gotten a bad link from the APOD page, which is likely not your fault.

You might try clicking this link for today's APOD. Otherwise, head over to The Asterisk to look for the others.

[Chris Peterson]

The "Discuss" link @ apod.nasa.gov seems to be broke

http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=190330

The APOD from March 30th, 2019 probably isn't ready yet or you may have gotten a bad link from the APOD page, which is likely not your fault.

You might try clicking this link for today's APOD. Otherwise, head over to The Asterisk to look for the others.

Otto is clearly asleep on the job.

[geckzilla]

Otto got confused by being switched to php 7.1 yesterday