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So, I managed to post the previous comment. That means passwords are being recognized. But there is still an issue with getting the menu to recognize that I am signed in. I have to get something to eat. I suppose I should have begun this after dinner instead of before. I'll do what I can tonight to get things working again.

Game Courier is not working too. I have some things to work on before going to bed.

Game Courier had a weird problem with a couple instances of mktime(). When I removed the leading zeros from some parameters to the function, it fixed that problem. But I still can't make a move without sessions working.

I have modified Game Courier to include the password field when sessions aren't working. So, you can now move in games even without sessions working. I don't think I can do anything else tonight, but I'll get back on this tomorrow.

Finally, I tried a few more things, and I got sessions working. Now I can go to bed without worrying about this.

Getting better - I was able to successfully make a move in one GC game.  Unfortunately, in another game, it seems the PHP update broke the game code somehow.  This log now complains of an illegal move:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Chess+with+Different+Armies&log=sxg-cvgameroom-2018-233-586

Obviously, troubleshooting individual games is much lower priority than fixing the site itself but I wanted to point it out.

That's now fixed. In PHP 7.1, mt_rand() was "updated to use the fixed, correct, version of the Mersenne Twister algorithm." This meant that it would generate different random numbers from the same seed, and the effect this had on CWDA was that it chose different armies for the players. For the sake of backwards compatibility, mt_srand(), which sets the seed, now allows the MT_RAND_PHP flag, which signals mt_rand() to use the old, incorrect algorithm. Using that, I reverted it back to the old algorithm, which will generate the same results that the seed used for the game previously got.

With PHP 7, the user and group were set to php-fpm instead of to apache. I initially changed these back to apache, but errors were not being logged. To get errors to log, I changed these back to php-fpm, but then sessions wouldn't work. So I changed them back to apache again. In the meantime, I added the user php-fpm to the chessvariants group and the apache group so that Game Courier would save logs when the user was php-fpm. Since the error log has stopped growing again, I will try adding apache to the php-fpm group. So, I will reboot the server after posting this.

It doesn't look like that has helped. The timestamp on the PHP errors log still hasn't changed. At least sessions are working. So, I'll leave it like that until I have more time to focus on it.

I changed the owner of the log directory and the PHP log file to apache, and now errors are being logged.

There's another Game Courier issue, seems to do with the AskPromote function.  In this log here:

https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php?game=Kamikaze+Mortal+Shogi&log=dax00-cvgameroom-2018-250-313

I want to push the Rook one space and promote.  I push and I get the askpromote page.  I select the promoted rook and click Preview.  I then get a pop-up window asking:

The information you have entered on this page will be sent over an insecure connection and could be read by a third party.

Are you sure you want to send this information?

If I click Continue, it takes me to the default GC preset - standard chess with abstract pieces.

That's now fixed. You were on a page with HTTPS, but the form used a full URL that began with HTTP://. I changed it to a relative URL, so that it would be HTTPS when the page is already HTTPS.

The Review Submissions doesn't seem to be working for me.  I can see the list of submissions awaiting review, but when I try to view one I see "If you are the author or an editor, you must sign in to view this submission" although I am signed in.

That's now fixed. The condition for exiting with this message began with empty($SESSION) ||, which would always be true, since the variable name should have an underscore in it, and $SESSION doesn't exist. 

Thank you for fixing so quickly!

Sorry to say I've found another problem ...  If you edit a Game Courier preset, even if it has HTML rules defined, the text-box that should show you the rules is empty.

In the test I did, the text I entered in the field showed up in the appropriate place. Can you give me an example preset where this is not working right?

Here's an example:

http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/play.php?game%3DOpulent+Chess%26settings%3DAlfaerie

The box for specifying HTML rules is empty, at least for me

This game has its rules described in a minirules file, not in the briefrules value. Minirules files precede the use of the briefrules field. I added the latter, because only editors could upload minirules files. Go to the /play/pbm/minirules directory to edit this file.

Ah, got it.  Thanks!

If I attempt to un-favorite a game from the heart menu on the game's page I get the following error: "The page isn’t redirecting properly"

There was a tab character after the closing PHP tag. Redirecting works only if the script doesn't display any text. I deleted it, and it works now, though I had to refresh the page to see the results change in the menu.