I have a set of Fossil repos installed remotely on my little VPN running Ubuntu. These are served as CGI files. All were running without a hitch until now.

For a long time since their installation (about 7 months now), it was using the "Original" skin which I had chosen instead of "Default" when I unstalled them. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled my local internet browser, which nuked my cookie settings, of course.

After finally getting around to checking back in on the VPN server, I noticed that my repositories were all using the "Default" skin. I logged in as the setup user and reset everything to "Original", and it seems OK now.

I do not understand how this happened, though. I checked the user logs under the "Admin" link in the Fossil page, and there have been no suspicious logins recorded since I had last logged in back in December 2023. Shouldn't remote users see whatever skin is specified in the server settings? Or is this stored in the browser as a cookie?

I prefer the "Original" to the "Default" skin mainly because the project's logo is more prominently displayed in the upper left corner of the screen -- I think it doesn't show up at all with the "Default" skin, although I might be mistaken.

I think it's actually stored in a browser local storage key:value pair, rather than a cookie, but same idea.

You could always check in dev mode, or make sure that Incognito mode does what you expect.

Does Fossil sometimes forget which skin to use?

It's Fossil's job to remember everything, backstopping the users, who are the ones who forget things. In this case, I believe the local user overrode the choice of skin somehow, months ago, and Fossil dutifully remembered it until said user nuked the place where Fossil was remembering it.

Off the top of my head, there are five places to set the current skin:

1. In the parent repo, copied down (once!) when initially cloning.
2. In the local repo after cloning, such as via fossil ui. Sync does not overwrite skin changes in the local repo, since the local user may have a different esthetic sensibility, different accessibility needs, etc.
3. In the local repo after saying "fossil conf pull skin --overwrite" to reset the local repo to whatever changed on the server via #1 after doing #2.
4. On a one-off fashion via the global --skin flag.
5. Persistently after the UI is up via the ?skin query parameter, which only has to be given once, then is remembered until you change it again.

…and I might well be missing a sixth alternative!

I suspect you did #5 after finding that the remote skin or the local cloned skin was "wrong" by your lights, so you overrode it this way, which occurs only on a per-browser basis and depends on the browser maintaining its local backing store.

Shouldn't remote users see whatever skin is specified in the server settings?

Not if they overrode it.

I prefer the "Original" to the "Default" skin mainly because the project's logo is more prominently displayed in the upper left corner of the screen

That's a drastic way to get a logo, requiring that you forego all of the many improvements in the default skin since it took over from "original" in 2015. There's another big batch coming, which you will also miss by taking that path.

If all you want is a logo, adding it to your local fork of "default" with a TH1 header customization solves that. Simply copy everything in the

  <div class="logo">
    …
  </div>

…block into your skin where you want the logo to appear. Now you have a small diff relative to the default skin, which will ease tracking any future changes.

Thanks @wyoung and @spindrift.

Here is my login page (repo is taken private, so one must log in for access to other pages):

https://hairgrove-codesite.org/SBBL_APP.cgi

I am curious as to which skin you see? (should be "Original" and not "Default").

Obviously, sundry new connections will not have any preference to the skin stored in their browsers. I just checked via mobile, which doesn't go there, and it seems to show "Original".

Apologies. All done on my phone, downscaling not without challenges.

To be honest even despite that unanticipated irritation, I thought better of it immediately after posting.

Chalk it up to experience.

Edit: Hopefully that's a bit less offensive.

Logo is no longer the size of an aircraft carrier's flight deck now, yes. Thank you. :)

Your monitor dimensions must indeed be impressive!

Yes, it's set to Original by default.

And if you visit https://hairgrove-codesite.org/SBBL_APP.cgi?skin=default, it changes persistently on that browser until you say otherwise.