Seriously, though, what’s with all the timeouts lately. I mean, granted, I posted 20K words in the last 72 hours, but there’s gotta be something else going on this weekend? ;D
Re: Did I break the forum?
You did not break the forum unless the admins state otherwise, it probably has to do with president’s day being on Monday.
Re: Did I break the forum?
Yeah, that was kind of a joke, but I guess thanks for the suggestion that the server admins all took the long weekend… ???
Re: Did I break the forum?
Actually, I did, because I’ve been asleep with a migraine since late Sunday night and as far as the server goes there are no other admins.
To address the timeout issue. This is the first I’ve heard of anyone having them, and considering I have friends with sites on this server that are way more active I’m pretty sure I’d have seen other reports if they were more widespread.
That being said, there are four different timeout pages you can get. One is caused by the front end cache for static content, and that one is usually pretty obvious since it tells you to email me directly at a specific address if you see it.
The second one is generated by Apache when it can’t communicate with the mod_proxy_fcgi backend. The exact message varies depending on why it timed out, but it usually on a plain white background. There’s also a possible timeout from PHP itself that does something similar, but whatever you tried to post usually shows up as a partial post. If you’re hitting that one something is VERY wrong since the timeout for this site is set to 7 minutes 13 seconds (don’t ask, just don’t :P)
The third type of timeout can come from the board itself. Those usually show up themed using the board theme you’re using and they’re usually caused by a session time out and tell you exactly how to fix the problem.
The fourth would be from your browser and the best I can do to look into those is have the data center check that when they moved the server to the new rack last Thursday they didn’t use a flaky cable.
Re: Did I break the forum?
I’m sorry to hear that. I was thinking server admins as in the folks who deal with the physical racks themselves; please don’t take offense…
To address the timeout issue. This is the first I’ve heard of anyone having them, and considering I have friends with sites on this server that are way more active I’m pretty sure I’d have seen other reports if they were more widespread.
That being said, there are four different timeout pages you can get. One is caused by the front end cache for static content, and that one is usually pretty obvious since it tells you to email me directly at a specific address if you see it.
The second one is generated by Apache when it can’t communicate with the mod_proxy_fcgi backend. The exact message varies depending on why it timed out, but it usually on a plain white background. There’s also a possible timeout from PHP itself that does something similar, but whatever you tried to post usually shows up as a partial post. If you’re hitting that one something is VERY wrong since the timeout for this site is set to 7 minutes 13 seconds (don’t ask, just don’t :P)
The third type of timeout can come from the board itself. Those usually show up themed using the board theme you’re using and they’re usually caused by a session time out and tell you exactly how to fix the problem.
The fourth would be from your browser and the best I can do to look into those is have the data center check that when they moved the server to the new rack last Thursday they didn’t use a flaky cable.
It’s the Apache timeout, and it’s mostly when I’m posting new material to my latest story thread, although I did timeout twice posting this OP…
Re: Did I break the forum?
Next time it happens send an email from your registered email address to timeouts@abdlstoryforum.info
That’ll trigger the server to pull the log files for the previous 15 minutes and email them to me.
I tend to not trust the techs in the data center. The last time the touched this server they managed to disable the public interface because they couldn’t grasp the difference between how FreeBSD and Linux handles netmasks for secondary IP addresses. And knowing them half of them were off yesterday 
Re: Did I break the forum?
Ironic. It just timed out when I tried to reply that I would make sure and do that the next time it timed out. ;D
PS: It was the 406 (Apache, I presume) timeout.
Re: Did I break the forum?
That’s weird. The only thing that would generate a 406 is mod_security and it’s only configured to do that for posts containing known malware links.
Let me check a different log file than the one I have been…
Re: Did I break the forum?
I realize you said don’t ask, but is that a John Cage reference?
Re: Did I break the forum?
That would be very weird, considering I’m not posting any links at all…
Re: Did I break the forum?
Today I’m getting “not available” from my web browser (Komodo Dragon v31.0) every time I try to reply (hopefully not including this one…)
Re: Did I break the forum?
I made some changes on the back end earlier. That probably caused a few of those errors as it takes it awhile to come back up. It should be just about finished stabilizing now.
Re: Did I break the forum?
It’s doing great right now. Here’s hoping the fix sticks! 