Hi, I have set the:

\define( 'NOTIFICATION_BACKGROUND_THRESHOLD', 0 );

...and I whitelisted my forum server subnet on the mailserver on the postscreen and whitelisted it for spam checking. Stil having issues that on some threads posting a reply, or sending a Private message to specific members takes ~5 seconds.

Further investigation turned out that this ONLY happens when the member subscribed to the specific thread, or the member receiving this Personal Message, has a non existing/working email address in their profile. I found out as I was getting "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender" messages right after sending this member a PM. 

I then send a email message from my webmaster address (the same address as used on the forums) from my Apple mail client to this member and I almost  instantly received the "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender" message via email.

It seems to me that there is not much I can do about a member not having a working email address. Some members joined 20 years ago, but still regularly visit or post on the forums. As we have 36.000+ members there is no way I can personally force every member to have a working email address in their profile.

It also seams to me that this should not effect the time needed to post a message on the forums. I am not putting the blame anywhere here, I am just trying to find a proper solution. 🙂

I obviously meant that the speed of a post should not be depending on the speed (or anti-spam measures) of a mailserver or the speed of the connection to it.

If the mail would neatly be queued within the application, this would not happen. It's unexpected behaviour.

It took me ages to find out why posts where slow in the forums in specific cases. Nobody would think of an external  mailserver being the culprit.

I have changed back this setting and whitelisted the webserver in postfix POSTSCREEN (../custom_postscreen_whitelist.cidr). This works around the issue by whitelisting the webserver for the postfix postscreen, but does not solve the issue that make the forums slow when replying to a followed topic when there is network congestion or a slow mailserver.

As those are external factors, I still think this could/should be resolved on the Invision Community side.

For me this is workable now. Thanks for the help!

Thanks, that helps.

Now it is blazing fast. I will keep an eye on the background processes and let you know if this works for us.

Is there no way to override the "if it is a larger number" and set this to forcefully queue all notification email somehow?

I have a support topic at mailcow (the well respected mail server I use) as well.

Based on what I could find from previous questions:

"That's just Postscreen waiting for impatient spam boxes. It is an anti-spam feature and wanted. It will whitelist sane senders for a while."

As It seems to whitelists for a short while after the first attempt, This would explain the 5sec delay. Looking into the issue further, transaction delays on postfix seem to be best/good practice:

https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Spam-Filtering-for-MX/smtpdelays.html

https://www.linuxbabe.com/mail-server/block-email-spam-postfix

https://www.postfix.org/POSTSCREEN_3_5_README.html

It seems to me (but I am not an expert in any way) a reply on a forum-topic, should not be depending on the speed of an external mailserver or network as those are not a requirement for making a post and should be handled in the background.

As soon as I have a response from the mailcow devs, I'll  post it here.

I'll look into that and get back.

Hi,

On our forums we are experiencing extremely slow POST times (> 5sec) on our otherwise crazy fast server.

It took me very long to find the culprit as behaviour varied from topic to topic / time to time.

As I ruled out all possible server issues, I then focused on the actual differences in the topcis and then found out only topics that have followers took long. Most new topcis or topics I posted and then reply to myself did not.

Then I looked into the email settings, tried PHP as mailer (I use normally use SMTP) and then all posts where practically instant.

Turns out when posting messages, the forum software seems to wait for the email notifications being send. Seems to me this should be a separate (background) process or queue, as most SMTP servers have transaction delays due to spam prevention.

Quote

 SMTP Transaction Delays

As it turns out, one of the more effective ways of stopping spam is by imposing transaction delays during an inbound SMTP dialogue. This is a primitive form of teergrubing, see: http://www.iks-jena.de/mitarb/lutz/usenet/teergrube.en.html

Most spam and nearly all e-mail borne virii are delivered directly to your server by way of specialized SMTP client software, optimized for sending out large amounts of mail in a very short time. Such clients are commonly known as Ratware.

In order to accomplish this task, ratware authors commonly take a few shortcuts that, ahem, "diverge" a bit from the RFC 2821 specification. One of the intrinsic traits of ratware is that it is notoriously impatient, especially with slow-responding mail servers. They may issue the HELO or EHLO command before the server has presented the initial SMTP banner, and/or try to pipeline several SMTP commands before the server has advertised the PIPELINING capability.

That makes SMTP unusable as a mailer.

Could IPS please clarify why the design seems to work as outlined and there is no queue or separate proces? Are you open to change this?

Hi, installed and enabled. I do not see the icon though.

Invision Community v4.7.13

You are soooo right…😏

Thanks!

In the setting we are able to choose the login method username of email address, but the translation does not distinguish between those.

That means users get confused and try to login using a username, though only email address has been set.

It would be nice if you could change that.

At first glance this did not seem to work, but it seemed my forums was set to use the invisible captcha 😉 Problem solved.

1 hour ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Please disable 2 factor authentication, and we can then take a look for you

Should be off now.

1 hour ago, SeNioR- said:

Try to restore the "warnHovercard" template.

Not possible as the template is identical to the original theme. I have two active themes for admins. A freshly installed default theme and our only slightly modified theme.

1 hour ago, SeNioR- said:

If the topic was added by the "Guest", it is not possible to send him a alert, hence the empty field.

Guests can not add topics on our forums.

Invision Community v4.7.4

Locking issue:

Reproduction: Go to topic > moderation tools > select lock.

When pressing 'save'  nothing happens.

I tried disabling all 3rd party addons/plugins/templates/langguages and clearing cache. Nothing helps, nothing in the admin panel logs.

The Second issue might be related:

Exception::0
Unknown or bad format (P-1Y11M23DT3M16S)

#0 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/uploads/template_33_e554b6dcaef0395bbd7d6d63ba187d0a_modcp.php(6271): DateInterval->__construct()
#1 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/SandboxedTemplate.php(61): IPS\Theme\Cache\class_core_front_modcp->warnHovercard()
#2 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/applications/core/modules/front/system/warnings.php(116): IPS\Theme\_SandboxedTemplate->__call()
#3 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Dispatcher/Controller.php(107): IPS\core\modules\front\system\_warnings->view()
#4 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Content/Controller.php(50): IPS\Dispatcher\_Controller->execute()
#5 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/applications/core/modules/front/system/warnings.php(42): IPS\Content\_Controller->execute()
#6 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Dispatcher/Dispatcher.php(153): IPS\core\modules\front\system\_warnings->execute()
#7 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/index.php(13): IPS\_Dispatcher->run()
#8 {main}

No probs, I'm just glad it's sorted 😉

38 minutes ago, Michel_72 said:

I can reproduce this easily. I click these URL's in the error log within the ACP, I am obviously logged in then so I create a new error in the error log using MY IP and login, which to me seems to be caused by one reason only, me clicking the link myself.

There is loads of errors in the logs coming from different IP-addresses and "I presume" guests or different logins.

Could you please help clarifying this as I feel we are on the wrong track here, or I am misunderstanding you completely here.... Some proof of better explanation would be nice 🙂

54 minutes ago, Michel_72 said:

I think the confusion comes from me clicking some of the error URL's in the logs. I'm quit sure my login has not been compromised 😉

 

 

well.... 😉

That conclusion still suggests my account has been used by hackers, which I have found absolutely no proof for whatsoever.

Not in the invision community logs, not in the webserver logs. I only found attempts of me intentionally clicking some URL's in the logs which caused new errors in the logs. Something I can still successfully reproduce even now I have changed my account password to a new 32 character long password.

Every single time my IP or account showed up in the logs, it was me clicking one of those URL's in the ACP to see what error they would generate.

I appreciate you looking into this, but I still think you are wrongfully accusing me of having my account and or computer compromised, which does not seem to be the case at all.

Ok, so 3 conclusions then?

1. Someone is unsuccessfully trying to hack my website by forming invalid URL's?

2. My invision community account or Mac has not been hacked, this was a mistake caused by me clicking the error urls?

3. Judging the logs there is nothing to worry about, my invision community is working correctly?

As far as I can see these errors all come from different IP's and not using my account:

It feels like you are jumping to conclusions here and you sort of scared me by making me think my Mac and/or forum account has been hacked which does not seem likely (but is certainly not impossible) due to all the security measures I take.

One example of the IP's from above log:

 I was logged in to the ACP and I clicked on this URL:

I can reproduce this easily. I click these URL's in the error log within the ACP, I am obviously logged in then so I create a new error in the error log using MY IP and login, which to me seems to be caused by one reason only, me clicking the link myself.

There is loads of errors in the logs coming from different IP-addresses and "I presume" guests or different logins.

Could you please help clarifying this as I feel we are on the wrong track here, or I am misunderstanding you completely here.... Some proof of better explanation would be nice 🙂

Hi Marc,

Could you be so kind to (privately) sent me more information about that? I use extremely long generated passwords and never the same password for multiple logins.

Nothing is impossible, but it seems unlikely that this is actually what is happening.

I have just changed it, 32 characters and rather complex.

I think the confusion comes from me clicking some of the error URL's in the logs. I'm quit sure my login has not been compromised 😉

Looking at the logs one of the errors seems to be related to the UBBthreads convertor

Hi, I was hoping some other community user would have been able to help based on the logs. Acces to the CP and sftp has to be opened manually due to security reasons. It is now accessible from your IP-address. 🙂

Hi, I just moved from php7.4 to 8.1 and since then I see some errors in the logs. I tried disabling the few plugins and hooks I use and the errors still persist.

What can I do about them?

TypeError: flock(): Argument #1 ($stream) must be of type resource, bool given in /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/Cache/Template.php:90
Stack trace:
#0 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/Cache/Template.php(90): flock()
#1 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/Theme.php(802): IPS\Theme\Cache\_Template->exists()
#2 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Login/Handler/ButtonHandler.php(42): IPS\_Theme->getTemplate()
#3 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/Theme.php(885) : eval()'d code(7631): IPS\Login\Handler\_OAuth2->button()
#4 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/SandboxedTemplate.php(61): IPS\Theme\class_core_front_global->loginPopup()
#5 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/Theme.php(885) : eval()'d code(17467): IPS\Theme\_SandboxedTemplate->__call()
#6 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/SandboxedTemplate.php(61): IPS\Theme\class_core_front_global->userBar()
#7 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/Theme.php(885) : eval()'d code(6638): IPS\Theme\_SandboxedTemplate->__call()
#8 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/SandboxedTemplate.php(61): IPS\Theme\class_core_front_global->globalTemplate()
#9 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Dispatcher/Dispatcher.php(173): IPS\Theme\_SandboxedTemplate->__call()
#10 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Dispatcher/Standard.php(113): IPS\_Dispatcher->finish()
#11 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Dispatcher/Front.php(625): IPS\Dispatcher\_Standard->finish()
#12 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Dispatcher/Dispatcher.php(155): IPS\Dispatcher\_Front->finish()
#13 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/index.php(13): IPS\_Dispatcher->run()
#14 {main}


#0 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/SandboxedTemplate.php(71): IPS\_Log::log()
#1 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/Theme.php(885) : eval()'d code(17467): IPS\Theme\_SandboxedTemplate->__call()
#2 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/SandboxedTemplate.php(61): IPS\Theme\class_core_front_global->userBar()
#3 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/Theme.php(885) : eval()'d code(6638): IPS\Theme\_SandboxedTemplate->__call()
#4 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Theme/SandboxedTemplate.php(61): IPS\Theme\class_core_front_global->globalTemplate()
#5 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Dispatcher/Dispatcher.php(173): IPS\Theme\_SandboxedTemplate->__call()
#6 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Dispatcher/Standard.php(113): IPS\_Dispatcher->finish()
#7 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Dispatcher/Front.php(625): IPS\Dispatcher\_Standard->finish()
#8 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/system/Dispatcher/Dispatcher.php(155): IPS\Dispatcher\_Front->finish()
#9 /var/www/sat4all.com/webroot/forums/index.php(13): IPS\_Dispatcher->run()
#10 {main}

Hi,

Sorry I missed that one. 

Do I need to repost my (last part of the) question in the template design forum? Because I would really not know how to use the custom css to achieve the same thing:

/* Page widths */
  --container--width: 1230px;
  --minimal_container--width: 1000px;