Susheel Chandradhas's dashboard

nevermind.. fixed.. was McAfee being a pain

When i try and do a manual upload I get "No log files to cleanup" and data never makes it to the site.

Everything working okay now (updated to lasted RescueTime plus 10.5.3 update). Sorry I haven't followed on my original complaint even though you guys tried emailing me to help figure it out.

It works now, good stuff - and thanks for all the effort to contact me and figure it out. Cheers.

Mark

Earlier this week I requested reverse DNS entries for our api URLs, so that might have done the trick.

I've got a couple more people I want to have validate it's working before I call it resolved though.

Thanks for the updates guys!

I don't know which update did it, but it works!

Yay!!!!!

My RescueTime account is finally receiving data, which is revealing that I appear to spend an inordinate amount of time using media players....

Hey - I just did the update to AirPort that came down with OS 10.5.3 and it let me connect to Rescue Time for the first time!!!

Before I always got Error #6

I tried a lot of things, including disabling my Symantec Antivirus software. Finally I just completely uninstalled the Symantec Antivirus/Firewall client and then did a fresh install and now it's working. So it seems like something was going wrong in the symantec software somewhere. Thanks for all the help!

Rick, are you behind any kind of firewall? Windows Firewall, Zone Alarm, anything that may be blocking RescueTime?

I am still having the same problem. I have tried unchecking the "Send updates using SSL" box and still I am unable to connect. I continue to get the same error that I posted a few weeks ago (above). Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can diagnose/treat the problem here?

My ISP is http://www.shaw.ca/. DNS Server: 192.168.15.1

HTH.

Ok, here is an update for everyone on this issue.

First, I want to thank Susheel who has been great in volunteering many hours of assistance in tracking this issue down.

The short answer is that some DNS servers are not properly resolving the host api.rescuetime.com. The short term work around to this issue is to get your DNS requests from a provider like OpenDNS. See the steps at the end of this post.

The longer term fix is that we are trying to track down why some DNS servers are not correctly responding to cURL's request for domain resolution. This includes us directly contacting DNS support at ISP's where this is occurring. You can assist us by letting us know the following information:

1. Which ISP do you use - and the URL to their web site
2. Which DNS servers you currently have in your Network settings. This can be found on OS X by going to the Apple Menu -> System Preferences... -> Network and pasting in what is in the "DNS Server" line

In Susheel's case, we were able to resolve the issue by having him set his DNS servers to use OpenDNS - a public, popular and free set of DNS servers.

You can set your computer to use the OpenDNS servers by doing the following:

- Open the System Preferences (Apple Menu -> System Preferences...)
- Click on the Network settings and select your current network configuration (Built-in Ethernet or AirPort)
- Click the Advanced... button
- Click on the DNS tab
- Make note of the DNS entry that is currently there in case you need to revert back to your initial DNS entry
- Click the + on the DNS Servers list and add both 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 to the list
- Click OK and then Apply to make the DNS changes active

NOTE: Changing your DNS servers, especially if you are on a corporate network, might cause other issues with internal customizations. This work around is meant for individuals who are comfortable in making these changes and have the ability to revert the changes back to their previous settings.

Thank you

See Crystal's interim reply in
http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/to... for the most comprehensive and useful explanation I've discovered so far.

Crystal and Jack from Twitter are following that topic, so I'll post this there too.

As I currently understand it:

1. SMS updates are very easy to turn OFF, from wherever you like (Web, phone, ...).

2. Twitter automatically turns SMS updates OFF whenever one of their their SMS fails to trigger a prompt confirmation of delivery from your phone network, for any reason at all. Your mobile service provider may have a temporary problem, your phone's battery needs charging, your phone can't get a signal, it's busy reorganising its memory, or whatever.

3. When Twitter goes down, SMS updates will probably go OFF too - and may very occasionally (though more probably not) go back ON when Twitter returns.

4. The only way to turn SMS updates ON is to send a classical SMS from your phone to the relevant Twitter No. (the international No. +447624801423 in my case) - quite expensive for some people. I'm certainly not going to do THAT 30 times a month! Using a 3rd. party app. running on your phone isn't enough: Twitter wants a "genuine" SMS to confirm SMS is working for your phone.

This classical SMS needn't be an ON message: a normal 140-character update will tell Twitter that SMS is working on your phone and turn SMS updates ON (until the next hiccough turns it back OFF).

For what it's worth:
I sent ON (to +447624801423) yesterday, immediately received Twitter's SMS confirmation, and received all 9 expected SMS updates over the next few hours.
Today, however, I've received nothing (should have been 2 SMS so far) - result of last night's downtime? Or were SMS updates affected by this? :-

"Given an overflow of IM traffic, we're going to shut off IM services for the night while things recover. We'll keep you updated!"
[blog link: http://blog.twitter.com/2008/05/too-m...]

5. For some people even this classical SMS isn't enough: they have to delete & re-register their phone to persuade SMS updates to work again for a few hours. This is risky, because sometimes a deleted phone won't re-register.

6. *** A lot of us would be a lot happier if Twitter could get the ON command to work from the Web. ***

7. Twitter could wait longer (e.g. two successive non-confirmations of delivery) before automatically turning SMS updates OFF. (Might be cumbersome to implement, though: introducing an extra database of pending c-of-d's with a counter for each user).

8. I'd really like to recommend Twitter to my friends - but at present this SMS problem makes Twitter just too fiddly for non-geeks to be bothered with.

I had the same problem yesterday. Tried to verify my phone again today and this time it worked. So I'm guessing it might have been related to one of this week's outages. – mdy, on May 24, 2008 06:14

I deleted and re-saved my number. Despite sending the notification code, I didn't get re-registered. No updates/DMs for me... On Orange, Romania.

If you meant -- am I currently getting updates from their account, the answer is not right now because my sms also stopped working around 18 hours ago. LOL. – mdy, on May 23, 2008 16:25

Does their account works? – John, on May 23, 2008 09:07

If I may suggest -- it might be a good idea to try following a regularly updated twitter account, such as @bbcnews or another one of the newsbots. By following an account that I know is updated at least once an hour, I'm effectively testing on an hourly basis whether or not sms is working again (without having to do anything). – mdy, on May 22, 2008 16:26

AND again, the same is for me:

Poland, phone-carrier/operator: Play

For an experiment, I've started following myself, and have not recived any updates till now.

I've just sent an e-mail with this problem direct to them. When I recive anything, I'll paste it here.

I was having the same issue. The proxy was properly configured, and I could do everything fine from firefox, but not from the rescuetime app.

The solution? To uncheck the "Send updates using SSL" box.

Why the issue? Because at work EVERYTHING needs to go through the proxy, including SSL. Is there a way to make SSL go through the proxy? Firefox does it.

Joe, I've mailed you on this. Unfortunately, I'm across the globe from you and its end of day here... Would appreciate a quick reply.

Cheers!