Site owners - how often do you rebuild your membership password file?

[Adam Mason]

Just curious. I noticed a few "expired" memberships showing up in the proxypass logs and so I asked for an active membership file from both CCBill and Epoch.

I was somewhat surprised to find more than 200 expired memberships in my password file that hadn't been removed. Anyone else had this?

[jorgebianco]

Yes, regretfully I have exactly the same problem with Verotel, so I re-create the file every 3 months or so.

I don't understand why this happens and Verotel never gave me a satisfactory explanation.

Jorge Bianco
www.authenticfootballers.com

[AlexManifestMan]

Our cms polls CCBill actives every 24 hours checking for expirations. How do others do it?

[Adam Mason]

We just let CCBill and Epoch do their thing... add and remove... but it seems it's not that reliable ;-)

[Nicedreams]

Don't have this problem with NATS.

Jimmy

[Adam Mason]

Don't have this problem with NATS.

Jimmy

Given the history of NATS and the number of people on record who have been threatened with court action for high-lighting it's weaknesses, I'll pass making any further comment on that lol

[gaybucks_chip]

Don't have this problem with NATS.

Jimmy

We have. Unendingly so.

[Nicedreams]

We have. Unendingly so.

You wouldn't if you have NATS set the expire dates and only update it on rebills.

Jimmy

[AlexManifestMan]

How does it then handle voids handled by ccbill or chargebacks if it only cross checks on the rebill date?

[Nicedreams]

How does it then handle voids handled by ccbill or chargebacks if it only cross checks on the rebill date?

It just doesn't update on the rebill date. Sorry if that was vague. It polls CCBill multiple times daily for such transactions and would correct the expire date.

Jimmy

[HunkMoneyLuke]

htpasswd files are notorious for going corrupt especially after you hit 100+ users in your password file. We switched to NATS DB authentication as NATS does an amazing job of keeping this information current. I have only ever had one instance where there was an issue, and I ticketed TMM about it and it was simply a config error on my part.

Also, you cannot rely on ccbill/epoch/any ipsp completely to remove old user accounts. When I was just using htpasswd access management, I would go through every password file once every 3 or 4 months and would end up finding about 5 to 10 usernames that were supposed to be deleted but were not. And those users got free access after their end-of-life so its a real issue! If you are only using htpasswd as your password management tool, I would HIGHLY recommend you check your htpasswd files at least once every few months.

[gaybucks_chip]

You wouldn't if you have NATS set the expire dates and only update it on rebills.

Jimmy

Actually, no. Dozens of tickets and constant, constant problems that could never be reliably resolved.

And I echo Luke's comments about the reliability of using PHP and MySQL databases to maintain member data... just not with NATS.

[Adam Mason]

I posted years back about flat text htaccess file problems. We've been running a MySQL password file for years without corruption issues... but not cleaning /rebuilding the file every 3 months or so (due to unknown "issues") is the reason I thought I'd post the question here.