Topic: Need help resolving weather34 updating issue with Cumulus 1.9.4

[nedflanders1989]

I'm having an issue getting my weather34.com template to update correctly using Cumulus 1.9.4.  On my weather34 screen at edinaweather.com/pws/index.php, you'll see the Temperature, Wind/Gust, Barometer, and Rainfall regions are not updating correctly. Both Brian of weather34 and Paul of komokaweather.com have been very helpful in trying to resolve the issue and providing items to check.  At this point, I don't know what else to look into after trying their suggestions.  Is it a Cumulus problem?  Is it an FTP setting with the host-provider, iPage?  I'm not sure.  I'm providing some screenshots of my Cumulus settings and the files uploaded/updating on the server.  Are there any tmp files that should be generating that are not there?

Brian
www.edinaweather.com/pws/index.php

[PaulMy]

Hi Brian,
I am pretty sure your Cumulus settings and FTP are correct:
Your Cumulus webpage http://www.edinaweather.com/ is updating every 5 minutes
Your Cumulus realtime.txt http://www.edinaweather.com/realtime.txt is updating every 30 seconds

I have watched your http://www.edinaweather.com/pws page and the update time is not changing along with the realtime.txt 30 second updates.
The update time does change periodically but have not been able to see when, or what time difference in relation to your local time.  Have you noticed when it has actually updated, or have you been doing that manually?

Paul

[nedflanders1989]

Hi Paul,

What I have observed is that those four parameter boxes: Temp, Wind/Gust, Barometer, and Rainfall will update every 4 hours--usually at or just after 4, 8, and 12 am & pm.  The Forecast and Current Conditions update more frequently, within about 10 minutes of whenever I refresh the page.

Brian

[PaulMy]

Hi Brian,
I am not an expert on how Homeweather works but for Cumulus source it uses the Cumulus realtime.txt file for the current station condition data which in your case is being uploaded by Cumulus every 30 seconds so your pws page should be updating at that interval, at least that is how mine works.

The information in the Forecast and Current Conditions boxes come from WU so not affected by Cumulus updates.
 
Would you mind sending me your settings1.php file that you have on your webserver? and I will compare to my settings1.php.  You can email.

Paul

[nedflanders1989]

Sending it to you now via email.

[PaulMy]

Hi Brian,
Hope I haven't jinxed it, but you've got it updating every 30 seconds now.  Did you change something?
Your settings1.php is a little different than mine but I don't have the latest version installed yet.  But nothing in yours that I could detect.  Your path to realtime.txt is correct.

So lets keep fingers crossed...

Enjoy,
Paul

[nedflanders1989]

Hi Paul,

I have not changed a single setting.  You must have been lucky enough to catch the updating.  I've gone to it on two different computers and the last update was at 7AM CDT, while I checked it at 8:15AM.  If the issue is due to a server setting on my webhost, I don't have an idea which one that would be.  There's a lengthy php.ini file with a slew of defaults.  This is where I needed to make an initial change to enable FOPEN and get data flowing.

Brian

[PaulMy]

Hi Brian,
Well, looks like my optimism last night was too high.  At that time it was updating regularly for quite a while until I went to bed - about every 30 seconds for a half hour or more.  Today it is now an hour old, even though your realtime.txt is current.


Either there is something in author Brian's code that is delaying the update, which I don't think is the case, or there is an issue with iPage that is not allowing the PHP code to execute every time, as mine and others work just fine, but then I don't know anything about server side PHP.  Your realtime.txt data file http://www.edinaweather.com/realtime.txt is clearly updating regularly.


Sorry I can't be of any better help on this issue.


Regards,
Paul

[PaulMy]

Edit:
realtime.txt was updating as I looked at your site a few minutes ago but now it is not, nor is your http://www.edinaweather.com site current as updates stopped a few minutes ago.  Maybe you are making some changes with Cumulus?


Paul

[nedflanders1989]

No, I haven't touched Cumulus since yesterday, so I don't know why it realtime.txt stopped updating. 

Brian

[PaulMy]

Both your site and realtime.txt are back at updating (I am doing a <crl><F5> to refresh now and earlier just a refresh and maybe that is why I didn't see it updating, but in any case your /pws site updated at 10:59:37 your time and not since then.  A call to iPage support may be in order.


Good luck,
Paul

[nedflanders1989]

Thanks, Paul.  I should have a chance this evening to get in contact with them.  I'll provide an update on this post when I get a response.

Brian

[nedflanders1989]

Paul,

I think I have a handle on what is going on, now I just need to figure out how to fix it.  It appears that the realtime.txt file only gets updated on the webhost server when it is requested.  So, if I go to edinaweather.com/realtime.txt (without a refresh), it has some time value.  I then go to pws/index.php and refresh, it will have the same time value as I see in realtime.txt.  Now, if I then refresh realtime.txt (i.e. make a request), the realtime.txt updates.  Then, if I refresh pws/index.php, the parameters fulfilled by the realtime.txt will update with the same time of the refreshed realtime.txt.  Meanwhile, the edinaweather.com makes its own requests separately that don't seem to get posted onto the webhost server.

In other words, the pws/index.php is not making a request for a fresh pull of the realtime.txt, it's just taking what is sitting on the server.  For some reason (I believe php related), realtime.txt is only updated on the server itself when something requests it and not every 30 seconds when Cumulus is trying to post it there.

Brian

[PaulMy]

Hi Brian,
Glad you're making progress, however

realtime.txt is only updated on the server itself when something requests it and not every 30 seconds when Cumulus is trying to post it there.

can this actually be done through a forced/timed FTP by Cumulus?


Whenever I've tried http://www.edinaweather.com/realtime.txt it refreshes at a 30 second interval no matter how often I use <ctrl><F5> I had 15 tries and they all updated at the xx:xx:08 and xx:xx:38 times in the realtime.txt time stamp and that corresponds to my computer time file.


Doing <ctrl><F5> on http://www.edinaweather.com/pws does not do a refresh no matter how often.


Paul

[nedflanders1989]

Hi Paul,

I'm not sure I've quite solved the problem, but I've made a step forward and I'll detail below in case someone else encounters this issue with iPage.  iPage includes a "feature" called server-side caching.  Basically, its a delay in uploading of files.  From my research, it drives web developers nuts since when they make a change to their CSS files, it won't take affect for quite some time.  The default for many file types is 4 hours.  Anyway, there are two things that can be done.  First, an iPage user can login to the Control Panel and select "Web Cache Control Tool" and then alter the default settings to "No caching".  The only issue is there are only 4 file types specified.  So, the next thing to do is to add the following code to the .htaccess file via the Control Panel .htaccess editor tool.  In the editor, I added this to prevent server-side caching:

<FilesMatch ".*">
Header set Cache-Control: "private, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0"
Header set Expires: 0
Header set Pragma: no-cache
</FilesMatch>

This information is available at the following two links:
https://www.ipage.com/help/article/file-management-how-to-manage-your-server-side-caching
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=962574

Now, after those changes, I did not see an immediate change until about 3 hours later, so I'm not certain this is the cure.  Now the weather34 pws is working now (edinaweather.com/pws/index.php) but I'll have to watch it for a couple days to see if this resolves the problem for good.

[PaulMy]

Hi Brian,
Looks like you may have gotten it.  It is updating at :08 and :38 regularly, fingers crossed!


Enjoy,
Paul

[PaulMy]

Looks like it is still updating regularly 

Enjoy,
Paul