Auto-update isn't working

Ianthealy · Post by **Ianthealy** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 4:18 am

I have not changed any settings since before the server migration, but all this past week the only way my comic will update is if I force a manual regular update. And then this morning, the comic "backslid" to two days ago and the regular update only pulled forward yesterday's comic. I tried a second regular update and today's comic is staying stubbornly in the workspace folder and not being converted to html and moved into the "d" folder.

I have no idea what is causing this problem.

Ian

JTorch · Post by **JTorch** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 5:31 am

My comic didn't update this morning either, and the queue was empty when I checked, so I had to do a manual update, which worked.

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 6:06 am

I don't know if the queue had jammed or not, but if it does, when the admins clear out the queues, any updates in queue are lost. Or historically, have been lost.

My auto-update is working fine.

ianthealy - I'd look at your comic's update settings, then not change anything, but click 'save'. Can't really hurt, and it might help.

JTorch · Post by **JTorch** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 6:43 am

rkolter wrote:ianthealy - I'd look at your comic's update settings, then not change anything, but click 'save'. Can't really hurt, and it might help.

I did that, too, just to be safe. I guess we'll see how it goes for next week's update.

Cope · Post by **Cope** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 6:19 pm

Yeah, I've been having this problem too. I've had to use a manual update every day since about last week.

JTorch wrote:
rkolter wrote:ianthealy - I'd look at your comic's update settings, then not change anything, but click 'save'. Can't really hurt, and it might help.
I did that, too, just to be safe. I guess we'll see how it goes for next week's update.

I've tried this a couple of days in a row without any effect. My update offset is set to something other than the default time. Could that have anything to do with it?

Dr Neo Lao · Post by **Dr Neo Lao** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:11 am

It hasn't been stated specifically, but the impression that I got from some comments is that when the updater has a coronary for whatever reason it stops altogether.

That is, new update requests aren't added to the list so it looks like there's an empty queue but in reality nothing's happening. That may confuse some of the established members who will see Queue=0 and think "Woohoo!"

Ianthealy · Post by **Ianthealy** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 4:17 am

Still not auto-updating. Dr. Lao, wouldn't that mean that a manual update wouldn't work either? If I do a manual, my comic advances to the next day without a problem. I don't mind manually-updating, as I write a daily author commentary for the strip (like it was a director commentary for a DVD), but I'd really like to not have to worry about also updating the strip manually.

Ian

Kemmy · Post by **Kemmy** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 5:04 am

For the record...my auto-update worked all last week, but I had to update manually this Monday.

Post by **Kisai** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:49 am

As long as the queue goes DOWN, the updater is working. It'll top out at like 9000-something, in which case that would be ALL the comics.

As a general rule, if you think the updater is broken, check the RSS.xml file, that has the last update time. If you can't see it, your's comics' description has illegal markup and you'll have to download the file from your ftp or as a text file if you know how to force it to see it.

Now the other point at hand.

It's possible, though unlikely that you have the time set wrong. once again, check the rss.xml file. The problem is, the new server runs UTC and I wasn't going to go monkey around yet again with time zones, so I decided to leave it as UTC, that said, that means that I had to turn on the timezone shift variable again, which means if you are in a daylight savings timezone, it might be off by an hour, and given that this year has been screwy for timezones, it is likely to be off by an hour, depending on what you expected. Check the rss.xml and compare that with the time you expected.

Also remember there is a UPDATE TODAY and a UPDATE TOMORROW column for updating. if you select UPDATE TODAY, that means the comic for 20070725 updates on 20070725 at mightnight, if you select UPDATE TOMORROW, that means the comic for 20070725 updates at mightnight on 20070726. Why we have this setting, I don't know.

anyway, the new server is quite fast on the updates unlike the old server, but the webserver tends to drown out the updator at midnight pacific.

Ianthealy · Post by **Ianthealy** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:13 pm

I have the time set for 4 AM TODAY (GMT +12). According to SiteAdmin, the last update was at 00:00:00 (no surprise there, that's what it always says). The RSS file says last build date was Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:14:10 UTC. Do I need to change something?

Ian

PS: I use Mozilla almost exclusively but I've discovered that if you also use Google reader and type an address of an rss.xml file into the browser bar, it automatically goes to the Google reader page with an option to subscribe. I had to open *IEwwww* to view the file! Anyone know how to disable this "feature" when I need to?

Cope · Post by **Cope** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:18 pm

ianthealy wrote:PS: I use Mozilla almost exclusively but I've discovered that if you also use Google reader and type an address of an rss.xml file into the browser bar, it automatically goes to the Google reader page with an option to subscribe. I had to open *IEwwww* to view the file! Anyone know how to disable this "feature" when I need to?

You could try right-clicking on the page and selecting "View Page Source". That seems to work in Firefox.

Post by **Kisai** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:15 am

ianthealy wrote:I have the time set for 4 AM TODAY (GMT +12). According to SiteAdmin, the last update was at 00:00:00 (no surprise there, that's what it always says). The RSS file says last build date was Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:14:10 UTC. Do I need to change something?

Ian

PS: I use Mozilla almost exclusively but I've discovered that if you also use Google reader and type an address of an rss.xml file into the browser bar, it automatically goes to the Google reader page with an option to subscribe. I had to open *IEwwww* to view the file! Anyone know how to disable this "feature" when I need to?

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:14:10 UTC is correct , the comic would have been updated at 4:14AM Pacific time. AKA noon GMT/UTC which is what you have your comic set to.

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:22 am

Locking this thread because the questions and problems with autoupdating are being covered in the post-migration announcement thread at the top of the page.

Kisai - the update issues are legit. I just ran a pretty clear test. Check out the thread.