Re: Odd Time problem only webmail

OK a heads up on this one for everyone struggling with
timezone "off by one" 
problems in webmail... I have confirmed a webmail timezone
bug as follows 
and suspect it has been responsible for the occasional
reports I mentioned 
in previous email.

Webmail can indeed do it's timezone detection wrong. With a
two fold result:
 - most significantly message display seem out by one hour
as they are 
displayed in the wrong timezone
 - date header contains the correct time in the wrong
timezone (not a very 
visual bug as the date itself is actually correct)
This is due to a fault in the serverside timezone detection
routine during 
daylight savings time. This affects all platforms but only
when using the 
"server" timezone in webmail.ini. Let me explain
what is going on. The logic 
used to determine which timezone to display messages in is
kinda complicated 
and dependant on the following settings:

webmail.ini:
 timezone: with valid values: browser / server (default) /
letter based zone 
(eg mst) / number based zone (eg -700)
 auto_timezone: with valid values true (default) / false
user.dat:
 timezone: {setting missing} (default) / browser / letter
based timezone
 _auto_timezone: {setting missing} (default) / true / false
 gmt_mins: number based timezone (automatically updated on
login)

Webmail determines the timezone by:
   starting with webmail.ini timezone
   then applying user.dat timezone (if it exists)
   if applicable, use auto_timezone (possibly overridden
with 
_auto_timezone) combined with gmt_mins to automatically
switch timezones 
based correct for daylight savings changes.

Now in the event that webmail.ini timezone is set to server
and user.dat has 
no timezone setting, webmail will use the server timezone.
It receives this 
as a numeric non daylight value which it is not able to
apply the webmail 
auto_timezone daylight savings correction to, so messages
are displayed in 
the non daylight server timezone. This is the default for
newly created 
accounts unfortunately.

The reason why the problem seems to mostly
"disappear" is as follows. As 
soon as someone presses save on the webmail personal profile
page then the 
user.dat file receives a value for timezone. The only
settings in the 
timezone dropdown are browser or a specific letter based
timezone. In any of 
these cases the fault will no longer be apparent as the
server timezone is 
no longer used and the timezone will be correctly switched
at each daylight 
savings transition.

Also if a letter based timezone is specified in webmail.ini
the same holds, 
the auto_timezone code will correctly switch between
daylight and non 
daylight times when appropriate and the zone that webmail
uses will always 
seem correct.

This is a bug that needs fixing but as there are easy
workarounds, at this 
stage I need to further investigate specifically where to
fix it so I do not 
break something else and complicate the problem further. If
this bug is 
causing problems for you my recommendation is to explicitly
specify the 
server timezone in webmail.ini and make sure that
auto_timezone is enabled. 
This should mean that you never have to touch the timezone
during daylight 
savings switches etc and webmail timezone detection is
correct for all 
webmail users.

Anyway, let me know if anyone has any observations to the
contrary 

Marijn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Surgemail Support (Marijn)"
<surgemail-supportnetwinsite.com>
To: <surgemail-listnetwinsite.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2007 10:28 PM
Subject: Re: [SurgeMail List] Odd Time problem only webmail


> Not sure, there has been a few reports and
circumstances where webmail 
> time is out. Not sure why it would suddenly start
though...
>
> Firstly check the timezone that your webmail account is
set to, and if not 
> set that to see if it helps.
>
> If that does not help send me your surgemail.ini,
webmail.ini and 
> user.dat, message in question and the time the message
was sent for 
> comment by us.
>
> Marijn
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "EPH Surge" <surgeelpasohonda.com>
> To: <surgemail-listnetwinsite.com>
> Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2007 7:49 AM
> Subject: [SurgeMail List] Odd Time problem only
webmail
>
>
>> Windows 3.8i3-3
>>
>> Windows 2003 Web Edition.
>>
>>
>>
>> Surgemail g_timezone is blank.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yesterday this was not a problem - there have been
no configuration 
>> changes
>> between yesterday and today - (uptime is 11 days 3
hrs)
>>
>>
>>
>> -          If I send an email from mail client
(outlook) to mail client -
>> time is correct
>>
>> -          If I send an email from mail client
(outlook) to gmail or 
>> yahoo -
>> time is correct.
>>
>> -          If I sent an email from outside (gmail
or yahoo) to mail 
>> client -
>> time is correct.
>>
>> -          If I send an email from webmail to email
client - time is
>> correct.
>>
>> -          However - if I send an email from email
client to webmail - 
>> time
>> is one hour behind.
>>
>> -          Also - if I send an email from webmail
to webmail - time is 
>> also
>> one hour behind.
>>
>>
>>
>> Anybody run into this?
>>
>>
>