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Who's Online / gforum_Guest / gforum_Online strangeness
We have something going on with our guest listing, and I wonder if anyone can give me a clue.

I've already run a check of all of the tables in the database, and none are corrupt. Just to be safe, I've also run a REPAIR on both gforum_Guest and gforum_Online.

What we're seeing is that gforum_Guest only ever contains one row:

mysql> select * from gforum_Guest;
+------------+-----------------+
| guest_id | guest_last_time |
+------------+-----------------+
| 4294967295 | 1149264725 |
+------------+-----------------+

If I delete that row, it immediately returns. The guest_id is always the same. guest_last_time is always the row insertion time, and it never changes.

The same guest_id shows up in gforum_Online, as long as guest_last_time is within 15 minutes of NOW().

Watching the server's access_log, I see lots and lots of guests... (sample)

72.30.107.93 - - [02/Jun/2006:13:17:17 -0400] "GET /forums/gforum.cgi?guest=4282269324&t=search_engine HTTP/1.1" 200 33761
72.30.102.29 - - [02/Jun/2006:13:17:18 -0400] "GET /forums/gforum.cgi?guest=4290802400&t=search_engine HTTP/1.1" 200 33761
72.30.103.83 - - [02/Jun/2006:13:17:18 -0400] "GET /forums/gforum.cgi?guest=4282497493 HTTP/1.1" 200 32626
72.30.102.151 - - [02/Jun/2006:13:17:19 -0400] "GET /forums/gforum.cgi?guest=4282195350&t=search_engine HTTP/1.1" 200 33761
72.30.129.16 - - [02/Jun/2006:13:17:19 -0400] "GET /forums/gforum.cgi?guest=4290557536 HTTP/1.1" 200 32626
208.180.125.216 - - [02/Jun/2006:13:17:19 -0400] "GET /forums/gforum.cgi?post=297374;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;guest= HTTP/1.1" 200 31265
72.30.101.161 - - [02/Jun/2006:13:17:19 -0400] "GET /forums/gforum.cgi?guest=4282310754 HTTP/1.1" 200 32626
72.30.128.220 - - [02/Jun/2006:13:17:19 -0400] "GET /forums/gforum.cgi?guest=4290279137&t=search_engine HTTP/1.1" 200 33761
72.30.132.140 - - [02/Jun/2006:13:17:20 -0400] "GET /forums/gforum.cgi?guest=4282356175 HTTP/1.1" 200 32626

But none of those guest ids ever show up in the database.

One other thing that I've just noticed is that when I'm browsing as a guest (not logged in), my URLs look like this:

/forums/gforum.cgi?post=292030;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;guest=

There's no value for guest. Is that right?

We've already restarted the mysql process, the web server process, and the machine itself. Before the restart the machine had been up for 171 days. This problem only appeared this morning. We don't believe that any templates have been changed since last night, but I'd have to check mod times to be sure.

If you need any other information, please ask.

thanks!