Hopefully this is a simple setting I am missing here.
I am onboarding new users on my chat server and one of their complaints is that, after hiding a chat room, the chat room is still showing on our chat software until we clear the cache.
Our SOP is to clear the cache anyway whenever we modify any chat rooms but in the spirit of trying to please them, I am looking for a way to automate the procedure.
Is there any way to reduce the cache or have it so that Openfire refreshes chat room visibility every 30-60sec?
Can you clarify what you mean by “hiding” a chat room?
Are you changing room visibility/discoverability settings in Openfire?
Are users leaving/bookmarking/unbookmarking rooms?
Or is this functionality provided by the client application rather than Openfire itself?
Also, when you say “clear the cache”, which cache are you referring to exactly? Openfire has a number of different caches, and knowing the specific cache name would help determine what data is being retained and whether there is a configuration option available.
One thing that stands out is that you’re running Openfire 4.7.5, which is quite old and no longer receives updates. Before investigating further, it would be useful to know whether you’ve reproduced this behavior on a current Openfire release. There have been many changes and fixes in Openfire since 4.7.x, and it’s possible that what you’re seeing has already been addressed.
If you can provide more details about the room type, the “hide” operation, the client software being used, and the cache being cleared, we may be able to narrow down whether this is an Openfire issue, a client-side caching issue, or expected behavior.
What I meant is that when we go into the room option and uncheck the “List Room In Directory” option in Openfire, it doesn’t hide the room immediately from our chat software. These chat rooms are barebone, no fancy setup on them and all the settings are pretty much left to default.
Sadly, in terms of upgrading, my organization is slow to upgrade due to every piece of software having to be vetted by our cyber security team first including any new upgrade but we are looking at upgrading to a version much closer to the current one available sometime this summer.
To be honest, this is a very low priority for myself and my team since this has never been an issue for anyone but this new client and even they seem to have lost interest since I last talked to them. If there is an easy answer: perfect. If not, we can live with it until we upgrade to 4.8.X.
Ah, that settings toggles the room between a ‘public’ room and a non-public room. The trouble is that this is exposed in a number of different ways. I’m not exactly sure how your client keeps a reference to the old state.
You hinted on a work-around: resetting a cache. If you give me the exact name of the cache that you reset, I can probably give you some properties that allow you to reconfigure the maximum lifetime of objects in that cache. That would reduce performance, but may help you work around this issue.
A lot has changed in how rooms are managed in the code. I would be very interested in seeing if this problem persists in 5.1.0 for you.
4.8.x is not much better than 4.7.5 as far as ‘modern versions’ go.
Apologies, I forgot to mention the cache portion. The way we clear it is in the Openfire Admin Console under Server → Server Manager → Cache Summary. From they checked all the boxes on the right side of the page and selected “Clear Selected”. Sadly they used the “Shotgun” approach by clearing all the caches instead of a specific one.
I am looking to see if I can get a v5.X.X on my test environment to see if this issue might be resolved the newer version and if so, I will probably just ask for a rushed implementation of that newer version.
I’d advise against reducing the cache TTLs for all caches - but if you can narrow down the exact cache that makes a difference, I can give you settings for that cache specifically!
