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For the last 12+ hours, https://stackoverflow.com/ displays this notice for me:

read-only mode

The linked status page doesn't show any current outages.

This happens only in one browser (Firefox 130.0.1, on Arch Linux). This doesn't happen in incognito mode, and neither in Chrome on the same machine. This also doesn't happen in FF on my Android phone.

This doesn't happen on other SE sites, and I can even get notifications from SO on those.

I tried disabling all extensions (firefox -safe-mode), this didn't help. I also deleted all cookies for stackoverflow.com, that also didn't help. (Do I also need to clean cookies for some other domain? I'd rather not delete all of them.)

I also looked in the browser console, there's nothing in there (one deprecation warning and one CORS error about https://accounts.google.com, which looks unrelated).

Help?

Improve this question
10
  • 1
    I think clearing all of them is what I did - never quite figured out which one it was
    – Journeyman Geek
    Commented Sep 20 at 5:36
  • 2
    similar to meta.stackexchange.com/questions/399904/… which states to "clear the cache" . Not sure how that is done on firefox.
    – rene Mod
    Commented Sep 20 at 5:37
  • 1
    @rene Just tried it, it didn't change anything.
    – HolyBlackCat
    Commented Sep 20 at 5:38
  • Can you do a ipconfig /flushdns (when on Windows, Google for linux options) (based on this answer: meta.stackexchange.com/a/401514)
    – rene Mod
    Commented Sep 20 at 5:41
  • so you cleared any __cf* and _cf* cookies, right? From stackoverflow.com, .stackoverflow.com, static.net and i.static.net?
    – rene Mod
    Commented Sep 20 at 5:47
  • @rene Apparently Arch doesn't have a DNS cache by default, none of the cache-clearing commands I found worked. Also didn't have any cookies from those sites, other than the stackoverflow.com ones I deleted. But I figured it out and posted an answer, and still thanks for your help.
    – HolyBlackCat
    Commented Sep 20 at 5:56
  • @HolyBlackCat no you did not try it. You only cleared cookies, but clearing cache (what you call "site data" in the answer) is also essential part of the workaround.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 20 at 8:36
  • 4
    Anyway, all that said, I think there should be a new bug report about the fact that this happens so often, to so many people. It should not reach a point where users have to clear their browser cache in order to use SE, it's absurd. If anyone can analyse this further, it can be a good start.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 20 at 8:39
  • 1
    @ShadowWizard I'm fairly sure I did that, by clicking this. Perhaps the button I mentioned in the answer does something else.
    – HolyBlackCat
    Commented Sep 20 at 8:51
  • 2
    I am quite sure that there is an ongoing configuration issue that is causing these problems to continue popping up sporadically. Presumably, with folks being improperly routed to the DR data center. The fact that it's been happening for months is super frustrating.
    – AMtwo
    Commented Sep 20 at 16:56

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

What worked for me is clicking the "lock" icon on the left of the address bar, and pressing Clear cookies and site data.

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1
  • 3
    There are around dozen reports about this already, and in all cases the solution is to clear cookies and cache. Not sure why others didn't close as duplicate before, anyway glad you have it sorted out and thanks for sharing.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 20 at 8:35

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