Blank Pages and No Response Thread

[BigMoneyJim]

This problem is scattered across several threads. Let's consolidate it here.

The symptom is clicking on a link, waiting, and not getting the page you requested. Usually retrying gets it right away or on the next try. Depending on the browser and situation you might get a blank page, and error message or just not leave the page you're on.

From your reports I can correlate this event with a peculiar entry in the access log, and I can see it happens regularly throughout the day.

I requested help from the SMF people but haven't had much response yet. I'll try again with more info.

I'm also going to try switching various features off and on.

 

[MJ]

BMJ,

It's a slight annoyance so don't sweat it

 

[Cut-Throat]

Yup, I get the No response page at all times of the day. It did seem to get worse the last few days.

 

[BigMoneyJim]

It's a slight annoyance so don't sweat it

Thanks. Well, it's mostly an annoyance. I'm afraid it may be happening as people post occasionally, and that may cause a lost message. Or a duplicate message, depending on what happens next. Dupes I can handle, but losing something just typed is a frustration I wish on no one.

Besides, I'm an INTP, and something's not working right, so I'm rather compelled to figure it out and fix it. If it makes you feel better I'm doing lots of things besides look into this, too. In fact I just bid on an won a cheap old dual-processer server at eBay . $200 for a 2U rackmount 2xPIII 600MHz, 1G parity RAM and two hard drives. It will serve some new web pages of mine from home now that my DSL is reliable again. It may live to make it to a colo facility, but I expect I'll have a better machine if it comes to that. (See what you started, Cut-Throat? Complain about "new" tags on threads and send a guy into a web geek streak.)

Cut-Throat, I feel like it's been happening more lately, too. So far every feeling I've had about it doesn't bear out through statistical analysis of the logs, but when I get a chance I'll try to determine if it's happening more lately or if it's just "our turn" for the bugs.

 

[BristolBane]

Maybe you could set up a page that only you know about and then have a script run on a remote machine requesting that page every few seconds. Then you could just parse the log for that page.

Here's the message I get in Firefox 1.03

The server www.early-retirement.org returned an invalid response to your request for http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/index.php

 

[BigMoneyJim]

FIXED! (?)

I think Dory36 and his host's engineers worked the bug out during maintenance overnight. There have been none of the glitches since 3:30 CDT this morning!

 

[kat]

Hmmm.... this morning (6ish on the East coast) I had new problems: a page that kept saying "database error" when I tried to visit this site. Obviously, it's gone now, 'cuz here I am.

 

[dory36]

Hmmm.... this morning (6ish on the East coast) I had new problems:  a page that kept saying "database error" when I tried to visit this site.  Obviously, it's gone now, 'cuz here I am.

Part of the work required that the server be rebooted. That was about 330am central -- a time I thought no one would be trying to get in. As the server came back up, I had to fiddle with a few settings before we were back in full operation. The error message you saw was related to the settings, which were completed by a few minutes before 4am central.  I hope you saw the error before 5am east coast time -- shouldn't have been any further problems of that sort after then.

dory36

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

That was about 330am central -- a time I thought no one would be trying to get in.

Surely you jest.

 

[dory36]

You're right. I should know better.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I should also stop calling you "Shirley".

You need to take a vacation if you missed that one...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

This is still going on by the way. Yesterday it took me 3-4 tries to get the page to come up.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

And by the way, I notice Dory is in red while the rest of us high posters are still lime green.


I dont WANNA be lime green

 

[BigMoneyJim]

Yeah, it's still going on. I haven't had a chance to look at it this week. End of the fiscal year and some other stuff is keeping me busy. Hopefully this weekend I can try some of the ideas I've had.

Gee, th, when you complained about being purple you got changed to lime green. Now you're complaining again. Don't you think Dory36 can come up with something uglier?

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Yeah, surely you'd think I'd know better by now...

Quit letting that pesky work stuff get in the way of whats really important!

 

[REWahoo]

Yesterday it took me 3-4 tries to get the page to come up.

th, haven't you heard about all the drugs on the market now to help you get it up...

REW

 

[dory36]

I dont WANNA be lime green

I fixed that.

 

[dory36]

This is still going on by the way.  Yesterday it took me 3-4 tries to get the page to come up.

For what it's worth, I have been running PingPlotter every 10 seconds for the past several hours, and have seen drops at one of the backbones that I, and probably others, pass through to get to ther server that e-r.org resides on. A plot is below. The red lines show momentary outages.

The second chart shows the same time period, pinging the e-r site, but a split second later each time. NO outages, even though the att backbone I pass through had outages on seceral occasions.

I think this means there are occasional very short outages on the ATT backbone, and I suspect that anyone trying to get a page at just the wrong time will have gotten the blank pages.

It probably also means there is no fine tuning we can do at the server end to reduce the problem.

Anyone with a solution, chime in! (Any soon-to-be e-rs at AT&T WorldNet?)

 

[Nords]

Re: Couldn't access the discussion board

Dory, BMJ,

I'm not sniveling, but here's data to beat your ISP over the head with.

I wasn't able to bring up the board for extended periods last night (~6:30-7:30 PM HST) and this morning (~5-6:30 AM HST). This is the first time I've ever had an access problem and it seems unlikely that I was hitting AT&T's backbone at exactly the wrong time on every one of my dozens of obsessive-compulsive attempts. I'm not saying that AT&T's backbone doesn't have problems-- I'm saying that there seem to be more problems than just the one that your pinging has identified. (Gosh, do you think AT&T's problem has anything to do my Verizon DSL service?)

I'm using http://early-retirement.org/forums/index.php with IE6 and I was getting the "page cannot be displayed" message varied with occasional very slow (yet unsuccessful) loads. It looked like a lot of people were trying to hop on board at the same time.

(And for the rest of the board, I'm not trying to solve any of my own computer problems here-- so don't feel obligated to suggest Firefox or cache-clearing or other surfing-enhancement strategies. What I want from my computer is not necessarily what my spouse & kid are willing to put up with.)

Dory, on an unrelated & hypothetical topic, do you accept financial donations to maintain the board? If so, what's an appropriate amount? Roy Weitz over at FundAlarm suggests $18/year and several online magazines charge a few bucks a month. And how do you prefer to receive the $$? Again this is NOT a complaint or coercion or even a measly bribe...

 

[Martha]

Dory, I had the exact same problem as Nords this am and couldn't get on.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Probably a bad card in one of the routers, a bad switch, or a bad cable somewhere.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Ah crap, i'm pink now.

Well, might as well keep complaining...it cant get any worse now, can it?

Hey Jim, like Dory, you also missed the "shirley" routine.

Maybe thats just me, my wife and I do that to each other almost daily.

You just cant get good 'help' anymore...

 

[dory36]

I went to the data center's support forum and found a dozen messages about slow response on lots of servers in the same data center (thousands of servers). Some referred to external stuff, as in

I think theres a big ineternet problem right now.

I can't get to google, All (datacenter where e-r is) servers are 40% + packet loss. Servers on the west coast for me have major latency, and Packet loss as well.

The only known and predictable slow times on the server that e-r.org runs on are from 1am Central time and lasting 60-80 minutes or so, which is when backups are run, and for about 5 minutes starting at 4am Central time, when logs are closed compressed and new logs are started.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I pull up about 15 pages all at once with firefox; this is the only one that stalls or doesnt come up, so I'm not thinking its some widespread "internet problem". I did hear about some "poisoned dns" hacking going on last week, so maybe we're unlucky enough to have been snagged by that and thats part of it.

 

[haha]

It's the same for me. I fail at least once more often than not. On 2 occasions I tried on and off for over an hour; I just figured the site was down and gave up. Also, frequently after I sign in and hit the button to go ahead, I get a blank page. And it is just this site,; doesn't seem to be happening elsewhere.

Mikey