The fora have all been quiet for a while, when suddenly everyone started
posting at 19:23 CET today - or that’s what it looked like. Sounds more
like a copy operation that got held up - sh** happens, but it would
have been nice if the postings had retained theie original timestamps.
–
Per Jessen, Zürich (23.9°C)
http://en.opensuse.org/User:Pjessen
On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:25:27 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
> The fora have all been quiet for a while, when suddenly everyone started
> posting at 19:23 CET today - or that’s what it looked like. Sounds more
> like a copy operation that got held up - sh** happens, but it would have
> been nice if the postings had retained theie original timestamps.
The gateway hung up - and then the issue was found and addressed.
Message timestamps are assigned by the NNTP server, so when they come
through the gateway, that’s when they’re timestamped - not a lot we can
do about that without completely redoing the setup - and we have it
configured so the server timestamps so we’re not dependent on each client
having their time set correctly (which would lead to a bigger mess).
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:25:27 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
>
>> The fora have all been quiet for a while, when suddenly everyone
>> started posting at 19:23 CET today - or that’s what it looked like.
>> Sounds more like a copy operation that got held up - sh** happens,
>> but it would have been nice if the postings had retained theie
>> original timestamps.
>
> The gateway hung up - and then the issue was found and addressed.
I had pretty much guessed that 
> Message timestamps are assigned by the NNTP server, so when they come
> through the gateway, that’s when they’re timestamped - not a lot we
> can do about that without completely redoing the setup - and we have
> it configured so the server timestamps so we’re not dependent on each
> client having their time set correctly (which would lead to a bigger
> mess).
Hmm, my news-server uses the Date: field in the email, that works very
well. A simple solution would be to use the forum posting timestamp
instead.
–
Per Jessen, Zürich (20.5°C)
http://en.opensuse.org/User:Pjessen
On 2010-07-21 22:31 GMT Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:25:27 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
>
> > The fora have all been quiet for a while, when suddenly everyone
> > started posting at 19:23 CET today - or that’s what it looked like.
> > Sounds more like a copy operation that got held up - sh** happens,
> > but it would have been nice if the postings had retained theie
> > original timestamps.
>
> The gateway hung up - and then the issue was found and addressed.
> Message timestamps are assigned by the NNTP server, so when they come
> through the gateway, that’s when they’re timestamped - not a lot we
> can do about that without completely redoing the setup - and we have
> it configured so the server timestamps so we’re not dependent on each
> client having their time set correctly (which would lead to a bigger
> mess).
Dunno about that, it is how mail works. I like to see at what time a
post was sent, and on what timezone. Here, all posts I see say their
timezone is “GMT”, which makes no sense at all.
Looking at the headers of your post, I see three dates:
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:31:14 GMT
X-Trace: kozak.provo.novell.com 1279751474 68.165.29.223 (Wed, 21 Jul
2010 16:31:14 MDT)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:31:14 MDT
I assume the NNTP-Posting-Date is from the nntp server, and “Date”
should be the local time of the poster - which probably is not, it is
also done by the server.
And my guess is that most machines nowdays have correct time/date.
For example, this post I’m writing is done at 12:41 local, or 10:41
UTC, but it will be several hours till is sent (I’m offline).
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” GM (Minas Tirith))
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:34:26 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:25:27 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
>>
>>> The fora have all been quiet for a while, when suddenly everyone
>>> started posting at 19:23 CET today - or that’s what it looked like.
>>> Sounds more like a copy operation that got held up - sh** happens, but
>>> it would have been nice if the postings had retained theie original
>>> timestamps.
>>
>> The gateway hung up - and then the issue was found and addressed.
>
> I had pretty much guessed that
>
>> Message timestamps are assigned by the NNTP server, so when they come
>> through the gateway, that’s when they’re timestamped - not a lot we can
>> do about that without completely redoing the setup - and we have it
>> configured so the server timestamps so we’re not dependent on each
>> client having their time set correctly (which would lead to a bigger
>> mess).
>
> Hmm, my news-server uses the Date: field in the email, that works very
> well. A simple solution would be to use the forum posting timestamp
> instead.
That would require changes to both the gateway software and the
configuration on the NNTP server. The problem with turning off the
server’s timestamping of messages is if I set my time to sometime in 2063
and post, that’s what the messages will be timestamped with, and that
will cause other problems.
IOW, it’s not the web side that’s the problem, it’s managing (or the lack
of ability to manage) the time settings for anyone using NNTP and the
side effects of just accepting the poster’s timestamp.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:04:02 +0000, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> Dunno about that, it is how mail works. I like to see at what time a
> post was sent, and on what timezone. Here, all posts I see say their
> timezone is “GMT”, which makes no sense at all.
Sure it does - UTC (GMT) is a common point of reference. If I post a
message now (10:10 AM MDT), that is 16:10 GMT.
> Looking at the headers of your post, I see three dates:
>
> Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:31:14 GMT
> X-Trace: kozak.provo.novell.com 1279751474 68.165.29.223 (Wed, 21 Jul
> 2010 16:31:14 MDT)
> NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:31:14 MDT
>
> I assume the NNTP-Posting-Date is from the nntp server, and “Date”
> should be the local time of the poster - which probably is not, it is
> also done by the server.
Correct.
> And my guess is that most machines nowdays have correct time/date.
You’d be surprised at how many people have incorrect time on their
system. I was working with someone the other day whose clock was several
hours off for their local time (but not UTC either) and they’d been told
not to change it for some reason.
> For example, this post I’m writing is done at 12:41 local, or 10:41 UTC,
> but it will be several hours till is sent (I’m offline).
Yep, and the time that’s relevant to the rest of us is when it got to the
server.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:34:26 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
>
>> Hmm, my news-server uses the Date: field in the email, that works
>> very well. A simple solution would be to use the forum posting
>> timestamp instead.
>
> That would require changes to both the gateway software and the
> configuration on the NNTP server.
Completely appreciate that, I just wanted to mention that a simple
solution was within reach.
> The problem with turning off the server’s timestamping of messages is
> if I set my time to sometime in 2063 and post, that’s what the
> messages will be timestamped with, and that will cause other problems…
A typical news-server setup will reject such messages. I’m pretty
certain it’s a standard inn feature. My own setup maps emails to nntp,
and rejects emails with ancient or future timestamps.
–
Per Jessen, Zürich (20.8°C)
http://en.opensuse.org/User:pjessen
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:21:16 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:34:26 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
>>
>>> Hmm, my news-server uses the Date: field in the email, that works very
>>> well. A simple solution would be to use the forum posting timestamp
>>> instead.
>>
>> That would require changes to both the gateway software and the
>> configuration on the NNTP server.
>
> Completely appreciate that, I just wanted to mention that a simple
> solution was within reach.
>
>> The problem with turning off the server’s timestamping of messages is
>> if I set my time to sometime in 2063 and post, that’s what the messages
>> will be timestamped with, and that will cause other problems.
>
> A typical news-server setup will reject such messages. I’m pretty
> certain it’s a standard inn feature. My own setup maps emails to nntp,
> and rejects emails with ancient or future timestamps.
I don’t know if the server we use would reject those or not - if I find a
few minutes, I’ll review the docs and see.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Carlos E. R. wrote:
> Here, all posts I see say their timezone is “GMT”, which makes no
> sense at all.
not sure but i think that is your client’s ‘feature’ to calculate the
GMT (based on what/how the sender’s client stamped the post)…
for example: the header for the note i’m responding to prints:
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:04:02 MDT
with MDT for “Mountain Daylight Time” (Utah Summer) because that is
when the server received it (i guess), but then it shows here (in my
thunderbird) as 16:04 CET based on my locale…and, i guess your
ClawsMail would show it as 14:04 GMT…
client specific.
–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]
On 2010-07-22 16:12 GMT Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:04:02 +0000, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
> > Dunno about that, it is how mail works. I like to see at what time a
> > post was sent, and on what timezone. Here, all posts I see say their
> > timezone is “GMT”, which makes no sense at all.
>
> Sure it does - UTC (GMT) is a common point of reference. If I post a
> message now (10:10 AM MDT), that is 16:10 GMT.
No, no. I mean that it doesn’t make sense that everybody is posting
from the GMT time zone: we should be seeing posts made from all the
timezones.
I mean that I would like to see “MDT” on your timestamp, not GMT.
> > Looking at the headers of your post, I see three dates:
> >
> > Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:31:14 GMT
> > X-Trace: kozak.provo.novell.com 1279751474 68.165.29.223 (Wed, 21
> > Jul 2010 16:31:14 MDT)
> > NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:31:14 MDT
> >
> > I assume the NNTP-Posting-Date is from the nntp server, and “Date”
> > should be the local time of the poster - which probably is not, it
> > is also done by the server.
>
> Correct.
>
> > And my guess is that most machines nowdays have correct time/date.
>
> You’d be surprised at how many people have incorrect time on their
> system. I was working with someone the other day whose clock was
> several hours off for their local time (but not UTC either) and
> they’d been told not to change it for some reason.
Ah, well, those are exceptions. And if you see someone with the wrong
time/date, you can tell them to correct their installation 
> > For example, this post I’m writing is done at 12:41 local, or 10:41
> > UTC, but it will be several hours till is sent (I’m offline).
>
> Yep, and the time that’s relevant to the rest of us is when it got to
> the server.
No, both times are relevant. It is interesting to know when the poster
wrote, because it correlates to the info he had available, and when it
was actually sent.
Let me explain with an example.
at 10:00 UTC Guy A posts a question.
at 11:00 UTC Guy B writes (not sends) a solution
at 12:00 UTC Guy C posts a question from A.
at 13:00 UTC Guy A answers C question, which will
invalidate Mr B solution
at 14:00 UTC Guy B gets online post all his pending posts.
It is clear that B did not see A 2nd posts at the time he wrote. But
now look at what will happen with the time stamps as they currently are:
at 10:00 UTC Guy A posts a question.
at 11:00 UTC Guy B writes (not sends) a solution
at 12:00 UTC Guy C posts a question from A.
at 13:00 UTC Guy A answers C question, which will
invalidate Mr B solution
at 14:00 UTC Guy B gets online to send all his pending posts.
But his post will be dated 14:00 UTC.
at 14:30 UTC Guy C remonstrate to B for not using info
from 2nd A post, which at 14:00 was available (for an hour).
Flames! >:-P
Granted, not every body can be subject to this scenario, but I am. Or
was.
Ha! I just noticed. I just sent, an hour ago, a post I wrote about
20 hours before, because I forgot to run “fetchnews” yesterday… but
it will be dated today.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” GM (Elessar))
On 2010-07-22 17:39 GMT DenverD wrote:
> Carlos E. R. wrote:
> > Here, all posts I see say their timezone is “GMT”, which makes no
> > sense at all.
>
> not sure but i think that is your client’s ‘feature’ to calculate the
> GMT (based on what/how the sender’s client stamped the post)…
>
> for example: the header for the note i’m responding to prints:
>
> NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:04:02 MDT
>
> with MDT for “Mountain Daylight Time” (Utah Summer) because that is
> when the server received it (i guess), but then it shows here (in my
> thunderbird) as 16:04 CET based on my locale…and, i guess your
> ClawsMail would show it as 14:04 GMT…
>
> client specific.
>
Let me see.
For that same post, I see, as the main timestamp:
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:04:02 GMT ← claws
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:04:02 GMT ← pan
2010-07-22 16:04 ← Thunderbird
Thunderbird is using my local time, which is two hours ahead of GMT;
thus pan and claws says “14:04 GMT”, and the three clients are
correct. In your case, your client is converting to your localtime,
MDT. The time zone shown is client specific, yes.
In email, I have seen some clients that do the timezone conversion, and
some that don’t.
But in any case, that is not the time at which I really wrote that
post. Looking at the “message source” (ctrl-U in thunderbird (or
claws)), I see:
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:04:02 GMT
....
X-Trace: kovat.provo.novell.com 1279807442 88.11.168.171 (Thu, 22 Jul
2010 08:04:02 MDT)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:04:02 MDT
All three dates above are timestamped by the Novell server. I think
that the “Date” header line should be left to the client, because the
“NNTP-Posting-Date” would in any case be made by the news server at
Novell, so that both dates would be available.
Now, by looking at the Message-ID I know it was posted from
“minas-tirith”, ie, my laptop. Powering it up it and looking at the
sent folder of claws, I see it is dated “12:42:36 +0200” (10:42 GMT),
two hours before the published timestamp. And looking at
my /var/log/news/news.debug file of my laptop, I see it was sent
between 16:03:54 and 16:03:55 local time (the laptop is not NTP synced
every day), near enough the final timestamp given by the Novell server,
14:04 GMT
See? The “kovat.provo.novell.com” server is altering the timestamp of
the posts we send.
It is not a big deal, but I would prefer not seeing “evidence”
altered :-p
(One of my jobs was log analysis. Does it show too much? )
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” GM (Elessar))
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:25:25 +0000, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> at 10:00 UTC Guy A posts a question.
> at 11:00 UTC Guy B writes (not sends) a solution at 12:00 UTC Guy C
> posts a question from A. at 13:00 UTC Guy A answers C question, which
> will
> invalidate Mr B solution
> at 14:00 UTC Guy B gets online to send all his pending posts.
> But his post will be dated 14:00 UTC.
> at 14:30 UTC Guy C remonstrate to B for not using info
> from 2nd A post, which at 14:00 was available (for an hour).
>
>
> Flames! >:-P
At which point someone from staff should get involved (either from a
reported post or because they spotted it) and get things back on
track.
Changing that configuration option would have serious ramifications not
just for this set of forums - so while I don’t entirely disagree with
what you’re saying, ultimately I don’t believe it will be changed because
it creates more problems than it solved (such as trying to get everyone
to fix the time on their machines - given the number of users we have
using this server, that’s a non-trivial task).
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:25:26 +0000, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> See? The “kovat.provo.novell.com” server is altering the timestamp of
> the posts we send.
>
> It is not a big deal, but I would prefer not seeing “evidence” altered
> :-p
One could make the point that it isn’t ‘evidence’ that’s being altered by
letting the clients timestamp posts, but in fact it would allow
‘evidence’ to be manufactured.
Someone with far more nefarious intentions than you could back-date a
post and then make claims they said something earlier than they did.
But ultimately, what we’re looking for here is consistency in thread
timing from the server’s perspective, not documentation to be admitted
into a court of law about who said what when.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2010-07-22 16:12 GMT Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:04:02 +0000, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>
>> > Dunno about that, it is how mail works. I like to see at what time
>> > a post was sent, and on what timezone. Here, all posts I see say
>> > their timezone is “GMT”, which makes no sense at all.
>>
>> Sure it does - UTC (GMT) is a common point of reference. If I post a
>> message now (10:10 AM MDT), that is 16:10 GMT.
>
> No, no. I mean that it doesn’t make sense that everybody is posting
> from the GMT time zone: we should be seeing posts made from all the
> timezones.
>
> I mean that I would like to see “MDT” on your timestamp, not GMT.
I wouldn’t - I have no idea what MDT is and I don’t want to know.
No matter what timestamp&zone a message has, I would like my local user
agent to display the time to me in CET. The RFC822 Date: format works
very well in this respect.
>> You’d be surprised at how many people have incorrect time on their
>> system. I was working with someone the other day whose clock was
>> several hours off for their local time (but not UTC either) and
>> they’d been told not to change it for some reason.
>
> Ah, well, those are exceptions. And if you see someone with the wrong
> time/date, you can tell them to correct their installation
It has, to my knowledge, never been a problem in USENET, so why it had
to be “fixed” here, I don’t know. A sound news-server will reject
postings dated too far in the past or too far in the future (“too far”
to be decided by the local admin). In a webforum, the timestamp should
be set by the forum software.
–
Per Jessen, Zürich (17.1°C)
http://en.opensuse.org/User:pjessen
On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:48:05 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
> In a webforum, the timestamp should be set by the forum software.
Bear in mind that the openSUSE forums are a webforum first and an NNTP
server second - so the webforum behaviour is what has precedence here.
Most NNTP servers have options to either have the server control the
posting time or let the client do it - USENET is highly distributed, this
NNTP server isn’t - so having centralized time is the decision that was
made and at least for now is what’ll remain the configuration.
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:48:05 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
>
>> In a webforum, the timestamp should be set by the forum software.
>
> Bear in mind that the openSUSE forums are a webforum first and an NNTP
> server second - so the webforum behaviour is what has precedence here…
> Most NNTP servers have options to either have the server control the
> posting time or let the client do it - USENET is highly distributed,
> this NNTP server isn’t - so having centralized time is the decision
> that was made and at least for now is what’ll remain the
> configuration.
I wasn’t proposing anything else. However, when the transfer-mechanism
fora-nntp is a bit dodgy, it would sure make sense to set the nntp
posting-timestamp to the time it was posted to a forum.
–
Per Jessen, Zürich (18.4°C)
http://en.opensuse.org/User:pjessen
On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:00:55 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
> I wasn’t proposing anything else. However, when the transfer-mechanism
> fora-nntp is a bit dodgy, it would sure make sense to set the nntp
> posting-timestamp to the time it was posted to a forum.
Ah, I see - that does make sense. That’s what I get for trying to think
at 1:30 in the morning when I should be sleeping.
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:00:55 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
>
>> I wasn’t proposing anything else. However, when the
>> transfer-mechanism fora-nntp is a bit dodgy, it would sure make sense
>> to set the nntp posting-timestamp to the time it was posted to a
>> forum.
>
> Ah, I see - that does make sense. That’s what I get for trying to
> think at 1:30 in the morning when I should be sleeping.
>
I did wonder about that, it seemed a bit late for you to be up talking
about timestamps when you should be counting sheep.
/Per
–
Per Jessen, Zürich (19.1°C)
http://en.opensuse.org/User:pjessen
On 2010-07-28 06:05, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:25:26 +0000, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
>> See? The “kovat.provo.novell.com” server is altering the timestamp of
>> the posts we send.
>>
>> It is not a big deal, but I would prefer not seeing “evidence” altered
>> :-p
>
> One could make the point that it isn’t ‘evidence’ that’s being altered by
> letting the clients timestamp posts, but in fact it would allow
> ‘evidence’ to be manufactured.
>
> Someone with far more nefarious intentions than you could back-date a
> post and then make claims they said something earlier than they did.
X’-)
No, that would not work. Remember that there are other timestamps in the header, and two of them are
always set by the nntp server.
> But ultimately, what we’re looking for here is consistency in thread
> timing from the server’s perspective, not documentation to be admitted
> into a court of law about who said what when.
Yeah, I know. I just think it is more consistent the other way round, but it is of course your
decision
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” GM (Elessar))
On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:56:44 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:00:55 +0000, Per Jessen wrote:
>>
>>> I wasn’t proposing anything else. However, when the
>>> transfer-mechanism fora-nntp is a bit dodgy, it would sure make sense
>>> to set the nntp posting-timestamp to the time it was posted to a
>>> forum.
>>
>> Ah, I see - that does make sense. That’s what I get for trying to
>> think at 1:30 in the morning when I should be sleeping.
>>
>>
> I did wonder about that, it seemed a bit late for you to be up talking
> about timestamps when you should be counting sheep.
Ultimately, it was after 3 AM by the time I started counting sheep.
It’s been pretty warm here in Utah for the past few weeks, and we use
evaporative cooling in our house - which works great unless the humidity
increases above about 30%, and it was raining off and on all night.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C