Weather Underground not updating

[MCQ]

I wanted to update this thread because I ran into a similar problem and this is the first result that comes up if you Google "Cumulus not updating Weather Underground". Hopefully this will help someone else in the future.

I recently converted all my Internet web site passwords to a password manager to get rid of the duplicates that I was using on most sites. The app generates random 12-character passwords and stores them encrypted so you don't have to remember or write them down. It has the option to use special characters in the auto-generated passwords or not. The password is more secure with special characters so I tried to use them on all sites if possible. If the site doesn't accept special characters in the password, the it usually squawks when you try to change it. In that case, I would tell the app to generate one without special characters instead.

I logged into wunderground.com and attempted to change my password. The app generated this password: 9yJx&gxE@G8b - notice that it has an '&' and an '@'. WUnderground happily accepted this password, I tested it, and it worked fine. I then changed my Cumulus config to use the new password.

A day or two later, I notice that my WUnderground site is not updating, however my CWOP information is being uploaded without any issues. I figure this means it is a WU problem. I wait until today and it still isn't working. I turn on the debug.log in Cumulus and it shows "invalid password" errors. I triple check all the passwords including using it to log in to the WU main site and everything works fine. Then, I tried Steve's suggestion above. I copied the entire string out of the debug.log file, replaced the asterisks with the password above, and sent it from my browser - FAILED!

So, I generated a new password with no special characters, changed it at the main WU site, verified it was working, changed it in the Cumulus WU dialog, and saved the change - updates are WORKING again!

So, WU shares your single password between your main site login and your personal weather station updates, but one server accepts passwords with special characters and the rapid fire update server does not!

I am going to email these findings to WU personal weather station support, but they have been less than responsive in the past. They need to either stop accepting complex passwords on the main site or post a note that they won't work if you also have a personal weather station and are planning to send them updates.

[steve]

I wonder if it would work if the ampersand and the 'at' in the password in the update URL were 'percent encoded'. That's what you have to do with certain special characters in URLs, but I don't know if it works with passwords.

So it could actually be a bug in Cumulus rather than the WU site.

[MCQ]

Originally I thought it might be a problem with Cumulus handling the special characters and that's why I cut & pasted the string from the debug.log file into my browser. When the browser test also returned an invalid password error, then I knew the problem was on WU's side and not Cumulus' side. I know the string works from the browser if formatted correctly because it works fine when using a password with no special characters.

[steve]

All Cumulus is doing is the same as putting the URL into a browser. If the special characters in the password are supposed to be encoded, and WU accepts the password when they are, then they would need to be encoded in the browser as well as in Cumulus.

[paulmartin42]

Curiously I have had this same issue (I had waited 7 days) but instead of 02 it was O2 ie
http://www.wunderground.com/personal-we ... =IBRIDGEO2 works
http://www.wunderground.com/personal-we ... =IBRIDGE02

Now I didn't type in oxygen (ie O2) ....

Yay for this forum