weird bug when posting

[Mark Kaine]

Browser, version and OS: 

Samsung, android 11

 

What happened?

 

So whenever i write a reply,  but do something else for like 10 minutes before actually posting,  the window will just freeze on "saving..."

 

I'll need to refresh or navigate away to be able to actually post, in which case the forum will most likely forget what i typed so i have to type it again...

 

i don't have experienced this in any other forum and it seems rather weird and unusual... and i don't think it has happened here until recently. 

 

 

Screenshots of the issue, if applicable: 

 

 

Any other relevant details:

 

 

If it's a cloudflare error, what was the ray ID from the bottom of the error page?

[colonel_mortis]

21 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

for like 10 minutes

Is it actually 10 minutes, or is it more like 30?

[Mark Kaine]

33 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

Is it actually 10 minutes, or is it more like 30?

good question,  but i don't think its 30 minutes lol. 

 

today when it happened i was just getting coffee that couldn't have been longer than 10 minutes,  but I'll try to take better note next time it happens.  

 

ps: i got home at ~16.45, so yeah... around 10 minutes seems right , clock shows 17.03 and i was obviously writing the post before getting coffee,  so 18 minutes max , but it was less than that for sure. 

[colonel_mortis]

Does this always happen, randomly happen, or did it only happen once?

(I posted this from my phone after doing those same steps, and it worked fine)

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, colonel_mortis said:

Does this always happen, randomly happen, or did it only happen once?

(I posted this from my phone after doing those same steps, and it worked fine)

I'm not totally sure it happens always,  i mean usually I'll post right away then that doesn't happen obviously,  but sometimes something comes up before I finished a post and then this can happen. i would say that yes,  this pretty much always happens when I'm in this situation,  happened maybe 5 times or so during the last week. 

 

It's really weird, because its just stuck on "saving" then and I'm sure i waited 5-10 minutes when it happened initially to no avail... i have to refresh/ navigate away , as said.

 

Oh and sometimes it did actually restore the post afterwards, but that seems totally random if it does or not. 

 

edit: so yeah, im 99% sure it happens *always* and the time frame must be between 10-15 minutes,  but it could be just happening at random of course... I'll really try to take note of this now. 

[Spotty]

I tried to reproduce the issue with the Samsung Browser on my phone but I was not able to reproduce it.
Does this still happen if you use another web browser, such as Chrome or Firefox?

 

Is there anything else that might be going on when you're trying to post, such as your mobile signal temporarily dropping out or switching between networks? Does it only happen if you're on mobile data?

[Mark Kaine]

19 minutes ago, Spotty said:

I tried to reproduce the issue with the Samsung Browser on my phone but I was not able to reproduce it.
Does this still happen if you use another web browser, such as Chrome or Firefox?

 

ok, i didn't try another browser yet. 

 

19 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Is there anything else that might be going on when you're trying to post, such as your mobile signal temporarily dropping out or switching between networks?

very unlikely switching of networks,  but it does kinda feel like the phone maybe intentionally (?) cuts the connection while the screen is off, that also happens with downloads occasionally (even though, that shouldn't necessarily prevent posting at a later point) 

 

19 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Does it only happen if you're on mobile data?

i do not use wifi, so yes as far i know it's only on mobile. 

 

still i dont get it? theoretically i could turn off the internet while I'm away,  and then still post after turning it on again?  Not that i did that, but I'm pretty sure i did in the past, ie as long my post is in the browsers cache it "shouldn't" be a problem? 

 

On the other hand if you tried it with Samsung internet (browser) and it worked (after waiting ~10 minutes)  it might be my phone (A41) after all?

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

btw, test post... its 14:21... im going to turn off the connection now while letting it sit here...

 

posted at 14:39

 

edit: yeap that worked... didn't freeze on saving.  honestly I don't think its the time necessarily,  more like random? 

 

but I'll try the same thing now without turning off the internet 

[Mark Kaine]

14:41 test post 2

 

edit: posted at 15:08, worked, so it's seemingly random ...

 

still happened several times recently... i guess that's hard to pin point why, i was hoping there's an easy fix or something (but yeah?!) 

 

@Spotty ^ i did test it, but can't replicate it now either 

 

maybe my phones cache or whatever,  im not sure how that works (when my post is still visible for me before posting when it happens) 

[colonel_mortis]

If you're on mobile data and your connection has been idle for a bit, it's possible that your ip address changed. That will invalidate the security token in the request, which could cause it to fail. However, I would have expected it (or most other errors in the forum rather than the browser) to fail with a visible error message instead of just hanging, so I'm not entirely sure that's the problem.

[Mark Kaine]

13 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

If you're on mobile data and your connection has been idle for a bit, it's possible that your ip address changed. That will invalidate the security token in the request, which could cause it to fail. However, I would have expected it (or most other errors in the forum rather than the browser) to fail with a visible error message instead of just hanging, so I'm not entirely sure that's the problem.

right i thought of that, but typically my ip adress doesn't change often (not sure but it seems to be days or weeks... another thing id need to thoroughly check before knowing it exactly) and also in the test above i did, i turned of my internet and my phone's screen off for about 20 (18 to be exact) minutes,  so if anything my ip adress should have possibly changed then (i didn't think of checking) but it *still* posted,  it didn't hang...

 

hence im now confused about the exact conditions as well, i couldn't replicate the error again (even after waiting ~18 minutes and without internet connection)  

 

lastly, i agree i would also expect some sort of error message,  my gut feeling still tells me it's some weird forum software bug (maybe in relation with the storing of unposted messages, maybe with the browser,etc) but ultimately that's just speculation,  its just an odd thing that i don't recall happening previously,  and of course a bit inconvenient in case it means losing a longer post. mysterious... 

 

 

 

 

[colonel_mortis]

Looking at the forum code for this, it's fairly straight forward - it disables the submit button, does a small amount of work that shouldn't give any errors, then tries to submit the post, reenabling the post button at the end regardless of whether it failed or not. It's therefore pretty surprising that it would end up getting stuck in a state where the submit button is stuck - either the request to actually perform the submit is just hanging (which would be my guess, and is out of our control) or there's something weird going on with the prelude code that generally shouldn't fail.

 

As I can't repro this locally, the only way I'll be able to make progress on this is with some debugging info from you. If you want to go ahead with that, you'll need to follow the instructions in https://android.stackexchange.com/a/202422, then reproduce the issue while it's being remote debugged, and see if anything shows up in either the console tab or the network tab.

[Mark Kaine]

27 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

As I can't repro this locally, the only way I'll be able to make progress on this is with some debugging info from you. If you want to go ahead with that, you'll need to follow the instructions in https://android.stackexchange.com/a/202422, then reproduce the issue while it's being remote debugged, and see if anything shows up in either the console tab or the network tab

oh ok, I can try doing that but probably not this week (so next week likely)  

But what am i looking for then, i suppose errors?

(just asking because i don't know and i can imagine all kinds of stuff showing up there that's probably not of interest) 

[colonel_mortis]

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

oh ok, I can try doing that but probably not this week (so next week likely)  

But what am i looking for then, i suppose errors?

(just asking because i don't know and i can imagine all kinds of stuff showing up there that's probably not of interest) 

For the console tab, mostly errors, although anything that shows up after you tap submit is interesting. Best would be just a screenshot of it.

For the network tab, I'm interested in whether a submit request gets created, and whether it completes, so again a screenshot of the whole thing (scrolled to the bottom) would be ideal.

[Ryuikko]

Same thing for me as well, it'll just load so I have to refresh the page to send the post, on chrome as well 

[Mark Kaine]

Just now, Ryuikko said:

Same thing for me as well, it'll just load so I have to refresh the page to send the post, on chrome as well 

ah, but for me the whole post vanishes when i refresh.... seems at least similar as what happens to you, and im on samsung internet (which is also chromium based)

 

 

@colonel_mortis ok, got it, thanks =)

 

 

[Ryuikko]

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

ah, but for me the whole post vanishes when i refresh....

Hmm, does It not say "your previous content has been restored"? That's what it usually says for me, only a select few times when it hasn't 

[Mark Kaine]

1 minute ago, Ryuikko said:

Hmm, does It not say "your previous content has been restored"? That's what it usually says for me, only a select few times when it hasn't 

out of 5 times or so this happened it only restored the content once, so not really. 

what usually happens is it puts me on the previous page and when I go back to where my post should be no content is restored.

[Ryuikko]

10 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

what usually happens is it puts me on the previous page and when I go back to where my post should be no content is restored.

Then I think I have a separate issue then you lol, it just won't post for me and is stuck there until I refresh to be  able to submit

[Mark Kaine]

Small update: i tried the debugging for a couple of hours this week, but it didn't happen during that time... 

i would say it's really pretty rare, it only happened like 2 times (iirc) during the last week,  and last time it happened wasn't after waiting a long time either, and it actually recovered my content after refreshing (which it typically doesn't do after freezing as mentioned) 

 

So from what i can tell, its just random,  just happens to happen more often after leaving the phone idle for some amount of time (i would say the longer the more likely it becomes)  

probably some cache issue or whatever,  but that's really just me blind guessing...

 

I'll update / post again if i catch something while debugging,  otherwise I'll just hope it gets fixed with some update (i mean it really seems like a forum software issue rather than a website issue to me, if there's any difference lol)

 

ps: basically,  it seems to happen when i do something else before posting,  like opening a new tab,  check pictures,  anything really,  including just leaving the phone idle... which seems almost normal that it might mess something up,  the real problem is, that the content doesn't get recovered more often than not, which might actually be a seperate issue?

[IkeaGnome]

18 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

it seems to happen when i do something else before posting,  like opening a new tab,  check pictures,  anything really,  including just leaving the phone idle...

try going in and out of airplane mode between when you type the post and go back to post it. I've had my iPhone do something similar to this when I lose reception without submitting. It doesn't wipe it for me completely. The forum saves it as a draft.

It happens to me from time to time at work. Type up a post while I'm waiting to clock out of work, no cell reception inside the building, come back out and it's just "gone". 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, IkeaGnome said:

It happens to me from time to time at work. Type up a post while I'm waiting to clock out of work, no cell reception inside the building, come back out and it's just "gone". 

yeah, it's really similar to this, except when i look up something on google etc to "check my facts" i obviously can't do that... and its not like it's guaranteed to happen in that scenario,  it just seems to make it more likely...

but otherwise I'll try this... so basically,  i write a post/not finished it yet, want to get a coffee...  i just put it into airplane mode before leaving... thats what you're saying,  right? 

 

(because that's certainly something i can try, especially because it's not a super common situation,  its just something that can happen from time to time) 

[Levent]

Issue might be related to uBlock. Enabling uBlock on LTT forums results in couple of JS errors in console. I am on latest version of firefox and ublock, issue happens on both mobile and on PC.