Known Issue: Unable to Login to Forums

[Stratadrake]

This has actually been going on for several months, but I will document it here.

[b]Symptoms[/b]

Some users may receive the following error trying to log in to the forums:
[quote]phpBB : Critical Error

Error creating new session

DEBUG MODE

SQL Error : -1 ERROR: value too long for type character(8)

. . .[/quote]

[b]Causes[/b]

This error seems to be related to users who participate from an IPv6-based ISP address. (Not every IPv6 user is affected, but we have received no reports from users on any IPv4-based addresses.) phpBB2 (the software these forums run on) was designed to handle IPv4 addresses, and while phpBB2 is [i]supposed to be[/i] IPv6-compatible, evidently ours has a problem dealing with certain IPv6 addresses.

[b]Solution[/b]

Basically, there is no fix for this problem, apart from us upgrading the forums from phpBB2 to phpBB3. (Unfortunately, due to modifications we made on phpBB2, we cannot "just" upgrade the forums to phpBB3.)

[b]Workarounds[/b]

Some users may be able to alleviate this problem by configuring their network adapter to only use IPv4 protocols. (Credits to Morpher for discovering this!)

The exact steps of doing this will vary depending on your version of OS, but for Windows users the general steps are:

1 - From your system control panel, open up your network settings. (e.g. for Windows 10 this is in the "Network and Sharing center" -> "Change adapter settings".)
2 - Find your network (wired or wireless) device, right-click it and select Properties. (Note that this may require admin permissions on your PC.)
3 - On the Properties dialog, look at the list of items/protocols available for the adapter. You should find one entry mentioning TCP/IPv4 protocol and one mentioning TCP/IPv6 protocol.
4 - Uncheck the IPv6 protocol from the list, then press OK to close the dialog and save changes. Now try logging into the FAC forums again.
_________________
Strata here: [url=http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/242293]Nanowrimo[/url] - [url=www.fanart-central.net/user-Stratadrake.php]FAC[/url] - [url=http://stratadrake.deviantart.com]dA[/url] - [url=www.furaffinity.net/user/Stratadrake/]FA[/url]
[size=9]Disclaimer: Posts may contain URLs. Click [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife]at your own risk.[/url][/size]