Hi Everyone,

I've poked around a bit but I'm not having any luck finding a solid answer. Is there any reason why LimeSurvey would have an issue with running multiple surveys at the same time from a locally hosted instance of LimeSurvey?

So basically I'm hosting LimeSurvey myself on my machine and I'm trying to have multiple participants respond to the same survey simultaneously. Picture Several people in the same room with multiple connected computers all working on the same survey.

Is there any limitations with LimeSurvey that would cause problems doing this? I have tried it but am having issues and am not sure if it's a LimeSurvey limitation or just implementation error on my part somewhere.

Thanks for any help.

DavidP001 wrote: Is there any limitations with LimeSurvey that would cause problems doing this? I have tried it but am having issues and am not sure if it's a LimeSurvey limitation or just implementation error on my part somewhere.

No limits in LimeSurvey.


Without knowing what kind of issues you experienced, further answers would be pure speculation.
Without knowing the network, your local pc/server and the clients no educated guess makes sense.

So what is the setup? What kind of tests have you done?

not a problem at all.

I guess the problem your facing in your tests come from the fact you're using a single browser.

If your using multiple times the same browser for a same survey, you can have some session collision problems. Just add the paramater "newtest=Y" (or /newtest/Y/ ) in your URL to avoid it.

github.com/LimeSurvey/LimeSurvey/blob/ma...survey/index.php#L62

Thank both of you for responding. I'll share more details about the setup and maybe you can help me out then.

I'm hosting the surveys locally but running them on several local client computers. My surveys are closed access with a Token table so the actual survey URLs end up being something like this:
http://localhost/limesurvey/191364/token/x31
which is sort of the landing page for the survey and then once you click next and begin the survey the url is something like this:
http://localhost/limesurvey/index.php/191364

The surveys work perfectly fine individually so I don't believe there are any issues with the survey structure. And when running the surveys on clients local-host is changed to the IP of the host computer. Basic communication and operation of individual surveys is not a problem.

Typically my problem will be one of the surveys opens alright but the second survey to open will give a token mismatch error. Also if I complete the first survey to open on a client and close it before moving to the next survey they function that way as well.

I have tried appending /newtest/Y/ to my URLs but then I get a different page telling me my survey is not currently active.

I've also noticed that refreshing the surveys that don't work will periodically correct the issue. However it isn't like a single refresh will consistently fix the issue. Sometimes it takes 5,6,7, or more times. Sometimes it never works until I close the browser and open it again.

Maybe someone here can help guide me the right direction. I would really appreciate it.

Also we're using the current stable version of Limesurvey. 3.x.x... I can look up the exact build if that's helpful but it's certainly one of the newer editions. I've seen references to bugs in version 2.0 suggesting to use the /newtest/Y/ to fix it but I have not been able to fix my issue that way.

You have browsers (unknown) on clients (unknown), which access a LimeSurvey (version build unknown), which is running on a host (unknown) via a local IP.

What OS, PHP, Database and Webserver is LimeSurvey running on?
What OS are the Clients running.
Are you the administrator of the systems or is someone else administrating them?

LAN
PC1

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PC2

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PC3

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PC4

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HostLimeSurvey

I would try to access Surveys without token in the URL.
Enter token manually. Issue still pending?
Is the survey active. Is the token list still there?
How do you distribute the token to the clients?
One Token per user is default. So what are people doing, when sitting in front of the browser.

OK.

Browser: Firefox v58.0 for all computers.
All computers are using windows 10.
LimeSurvey Version 3.0.0+171222
All is being run through XAMPP Version: 7.2.0 and Apache web server.

Is there any reason why you feel the version of the software I'm running would have any bearing on whether or not LimeSurvey functions correctly? I can only see that mattering if there's a bug with LimeSurvey where it does not work well for Program X version Y or if I'm having compatibility problems somewhere but I'm not and I've already been told LimeSurvey is designed to operate just fine in these conditions.

As I said before the tokens work fine running one survey at a time. Of course the survey is active. It's not an issue with the computer networking or the software I'm running. It functions the way it should in most circumstances which leads me to believe there is no issue with my environment.

Each computer can run surveys individually. The only time an error is introduced is when multiple computers access the same survey. They each are using a unique token that is generated independently for each computer which is based on unique user IDs. The tokens themselves are unique.

Users never enter the tokens for themselves so there is not even opportunity for any input error. The surveys are part of a larger application that calls them as needed.

Also as I've already said the surveys usually correct themselves after some amount of refreshing/reloading. That wouldn't happen if there was an issue with the surveys or the computer administration. I've already ruled out just about every issue that is NOT related to LimeSurvey which is what brought me here. Hoping to learn something about LimeSurvey that could be causing the issue. Thanks.

DavidP001 wrote: Users never enter the tokens for themselves so there is not even opportunity for any input error.

I wasn't looking for input errors but URL errors depending on the actual token.
And because of that I wanted to know how the URL/Tokens are handed to the user.

So you have a application which generates the URL.
I would check, if the issue persists, when you clear all cookies between accessing another survey-link via token.

Also as I've already said the surveys usually correct themselves after some amount of refreshing/reloading. That wouldn't happen if there was an issue with the surveys or the computer administration.

Not my experience.

I've already ruled out just about every issue that is NOT related to LimeSurvey which is what brought me here. Hoping to learn something about LimeSurvey that could be causing the issue. Thanks.

Well, if that is the case, then feel free to report a bug and post the bugticket URL here. Most of them are using Linux only. So a bug which only occurs running under Windows is not that unusual. Fancy URLs on Windows. Issues with rewriting URL correctly.

As far as I know, Xampp is not really meant for production enviroments, but rather just for local testing. Maybe (and I am not an expert here) they don't allow many concurrent connections? Limesurvey should usually run fine in the described environment.
But if you are sure that you have excluded all external sources for error, feel free to create a bug report. However, be more specific than in your first post and give as much information as possible.
Before this, I would check how Xampp handles sessions, how much space there is for sessions, etc. Limesurvey sessions can be rather large.

LimeSurvey Version 3.0.0+171222

Please, update to latest version to fix the issue with newtest/Y/

then everything will work fine.

Ok. Thanks for the suggestion. In a formal bug report I would certainly include more information but in a mostly public forum I was just trying to get the conversation going the right direction. I didn't know if there were common points of failure to I'm missing or a conflict I wouldn't expect.

Although using completely separate browsers did seem to solve the issue so I don't believe it's XAMPP related. I could still be wrong but it appears to be related to Lime Survey session issues causing the problem and I was unable to fix it with the recommended/known solution that's been around since version 2.0.