Forum registrations from Hawaii

hawaiicharles · 2012-12-21 20:14:36

I thought I should alert you that forum registration is bugged for Hawaii residents. I just registered today, but I had tried unsuccessfully many times previously. Each time I was told that my answer was wrong. That led to much frustration because I knew that it was right. Finally, on a whim I decided to check the box for "Daylight Savings Time is in effect" - and voilà! - my registration completed. However, that's basically a hack, because Hawaii does not use Daylight Savings Time at all. My concern is that other aspiring members may be turned away because they don't know the work-around. I understand that the question is meant to filter out "newbies" or what-have-you, but I don't think it falls under the category of "intuitive" - even for an advanced Linux user - to intentionally falsify one's registration form.

Xyne · 2012-12-21 20:41:22

Time zones and DST should not matter. The "date" command is invoked with the "-u" option, which forces it to use UTC. The command then returns the week (e.g. 51). Maybe your system time is off a little and you were just unlucky enough to try to register in the narrow window when your computer reported the wrong week.

Please check if DST changes the output of "date -u +%W".

hawaiicharles · 2012-12-21 22:16:22

Perhaps I could have made your investigation easier by posting the hash that I used to register. It's
f01a5e55031cef678bb30acc0315222bcaf48e0319787c6e09201dc93a6a670a
(The un-hashed output is "51Linux") I'm guessing you can verify that that is the correct hash for this week. I ran the command on 2 different computers and also at http://bellard.org/jslinux/, and each time I got the above hash. I tried to register about 5 times just this morning (roughly 3 hours ago), and each time I was told that my answer was wrong. I even ran "pacman -Syu" and then "ntpdate pool.ntp.org" to make sure my system was fully up to date and had the right time. I successfully registered using the same hash after putting a check mark in the DST box.

Sorry but I'm not sure what you mean by "check if DST changes the output of "date -u +%W". You want me to change my system to a different time zone and then run the command again? Since today is Friday (Saturday in some parts of the world) I don't see how there can be any confusion over which week of the year it is right now.

Xyne · 2012-12-21 23:32:32

I misread your first post to mean that you had changed your local DST settings, which would (obviously) have no effect on UTC output of local commands. Now that I understand that you meant the DST checkbox on the user page, I still don't understand how that could possibly effect it. All that does is change the times displayed on each page when you browse the forum. It should be strictly cosmetic and unrelated to the command. Even if not, it would not change the reported week, as already mentioned.

Maybe there was a transient server error. There is not much that can go wrong with the command pipe that generates the hash. If you are absolutely sure that the local time was correct and that this wasn't a PEBKAC then you should file a bug report. The server admin will be able to determine if it was a server error.

hawaiicharles · 2012-12-21 23:47:42

Well, I'm 99% sure it wasn't a PEBKAC. Could anyone else verify that the hash I posted above is correct this week? If we can verify that, then we can isolate the problem to the server side rather than the user side (PEBKAC or not).
As I also mentioned, I had tried to register 2 weeks ago (when the unhashed output was "49Linux") and I got the same error. At the time I simply gave up because I didn't know what else to do. So if it is indeed a server error, I don't think it's a transient one.

Xyne · 2012-12-22 00:02:59

The hash is correct:

f01a5e55031cef678bb30acc0315222bcaf48e0319787c6e09201dc93a6a670a

Arch Linux

#1 2012-12-21 20:14:36

Forum registrations from Hawaii

#2 2012-12-21 20:41:22

Re: Forum registrations from Hawaii

#3 2012-12-21 22:16:22

Re: Forum registrations from Hawaii

#4 2012-12-21 23:32:32

Re: Forum registrations from Hawaii

#5 2012-12-21 23:47:42

Re: Forum registrations from Hawaii

#6 2012-12-22 00:02:59

Re: Forum registrations from Hawaii

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