Problem with linuxmint.com?

[JeremyB]

The last time I saw a Sucuri page was during the last announced forums maintenance. I haven't had any issues

[killer de bug]

Same for me. I don't see these time out pages.
I tried to open all the subforum at the same time to force the load of a huge amount of pages. It loaded just fine.

[chrisuk]

Just to make it clear what I meant by "time" and "cached pages":

These screenshots are from Firefox and Chromium 15 minutes ago - one after another, after clearing cache and as a guest (so this is what every other guest could see... maybe)

Firefox 14-30 pm2.jpeg

Chromium 14-30pm 2.jpeg

I'm in the UK so the hour is obviously different... but the minutes will match my time after I refresh the page a couple of times. So I'm seeing a cached page, not the current one.

[Cosmo.]

Lucky you. (@ the 2 posters at the top of the page)

I just needed 5 (in words: five) attempts, to get here. 2 for opening the index for this sub-forum, than 3 more to get here. Similar for other threads I opened before I came to this one.

And there is more: Before I was able to open this thread, the post by chrisuk (first page at the bottom) was new for me and was listed in "Notifications" at the top of the forum page; following that the counter "(1)" was added to the left of the firefox title bar. When I was finally able to open this thread I was immediately directed to the second page of this thread, although I always use the red button in front of the thread title on the index page of a sub-forum, which usually brings me to the first unread page (what would have been the one by chrisuk in this case); also the counter in the title bar and to the left of the "Notifications" menu vanished respectively was set to zero. This disturbs the workflow completely.
Clearly only the server can be made responsible for this, as the read-state is only managed and saved by the server.

EDIT: For completeness: I needed 5 attempts to submit this post. Intolerable.

[JeremyB]

Hi Cosmo.

What do you get from

Code: Select all

ping -c3 forums.linuxmint.com

[Cosmo.]

And one more addition:

When I finally had submitted my previous post (the original one, without the added edit), I saw the last post by chrisuk. The interesting point is, that I saw it with only 1 picture. But the 2nd picture must have been already there, otherwise the forum software would have added a note, that chrisuk had edited the post. That means: The server showed me the post in a incomplete state!

It is impossible to work with such circumstances, so I will for now stop working in the forum. Without knowing, if I can really see the complete post of a user and needing about 5 minutes for submitting a singe reply is not a base.

@JeremyB

Code: Select all

$ ping -c3 forums.linuxmint.com
PING forums.linuxmint.com (192.124.249.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from cloudproxy10008.sucuri.net (192.124.249.8): icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=12.6 ms
64 bytes from cloudproxy10008.sucuri.net (192.124.249.8): icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=14.6 ms
64 bytes from cloudproxy10008.sucuri.net (192.124.249.8): icmp_seq=3 ttl=58 time=12.2 ms

--- forums.linuxmint.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 12.287/13.199/14.683/1.058 ms

Repeating this gives every time the same result (+- 2 ms for the time value in the summary).

[chrisuk]

[...]
It is impossible to work with such circumstances, so I will for now stop working in the forum. Without knowing, if I can really see the complete post of a user and needing about 5 minutes for submitting a singe reply is not a base.

That would be a shame, but I can understand your frustration

[Cosmo.]

After my previous post above I logged out of the forum and did not log in again for the rest of the day.

Surprise, surprise: When I walked through the forum yesterday in logged off state the problem did not reappear, not a single time. Browser session and used tab stayed the same, until I shut down the computer in the night. This increases m suspicion, that there is a problem on the server site, obviously some kind of race condition.

Also this morning, when I logged in again there was no problem. Not even one of the delays, which I noticed in the past far too often. So far so good. The hope, that this keeps stable now, dies at last.

[killer de bug]

Are you using a VPN?
Or some special addon to kill cookies?

[Cosmo.]

Are you using a VPN?
Or some special addon to kill cookies?

Nothing like that. Not in the past, not now. I also did not use the function to kill board cookies, so they got preserved during the complete browser session after having logged out yesterday.

[altair4]

Surprise, surprise: When I walked through the forum yesterday in logged off state the problem did not reappear, not a single time. Browser session and used tab stayed the same, until I shut down the computer in the night. This increases m suspicion, that there is a problem on the server site, obviously some kind of race condition.

My experience as well. The problem you have been describing in this topic has never happened to me in a logged off state. It's only when I'm logged in.

[BG405]

I've been having this issue from time to time but hadn't noticed whether I may also have been viewing cached pages; that may explain inconsistencies in the notifications - have had them vanish for no apparent reason, then reappear - same has happened with posts in threads but I assumed they had been temporarily put in the moderators area.

I use wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest.py | python for checking the broadband performance both out and about & at home. The aforementioned ping test ping -c3 forums.linuxmint.com will be useful too.

Fortunately I find that on clicking the Back button, the text I've entered is preserved. This will be a really important consideration when I/we are forced to move on after Firefox ends low-level API add-on support and moves to WebExtensions exclusively (I can not live with Australis and without Tab Groups, period). This is a subject for other threads but is an important consideration in the case of server issues like this, as it'll mean going back to the method I used with Windows i.e. using a text editor to compose posts. I guess I've gotten lazy since Firefox in Mint can actually keep up with my typing; FF in Windows couldn't. I'm no keyboard wizard either!*

Chris, I'd actually been looking for a current time display on the LM forums so thanks for pointing out that it is indeed there, but it seems only on the Index pages. Would be really useful to have that on the threads too.

*Keyboard warrior, maybe

[xenopeek]

Are you using a VPN?
Or some special addon to kill cookies?

Nothing like that. Not in the past, not now. I also did not use the function to kill board cookies, so they got preserved during the complete browser session after having logged out yesterday.

Something that may play a factor here is that your IP address is changing frequently. I think we looked into that last year also, after Sucuri was added to our websites. Wasn't it your ISP giving you a very short lease on your IP addresses? I count over 700 IP addresses from you, which averages to 5 to 6 changes per week.

[JeremyB]

I have over 800 IP's on the record. I did have issues at times with the old board but the issue was that I would get logged out while posting a reply.

It would be nice to figure out the cause of Cosmo.'s issue in case it happens again

[altair4]

Surprise, surprise: When I walked through the forum yesterday in logged off state the problem did not reappear, not a single time. Browser session and used tab stayed the same, until I shut down the computer in the night. This increases m suspicion, that there is a problem on the server site, obviously some kind of race condition.

My experience as well. The problem you have been describing in this topic has never happened to me in a logged off state. It's only when I'm logged in.

I was wrong. It happened to me for the past 20 minutes or so just trying to access the forum page.

[Cosmo.]

It just happened again, exactly 3 minutes after high noon (local western european time, should be the same for xenopeek). I refreshed the site exactly every 1 minute and so I can tell, that it took a quarter of an hour until I was back in business again.

This time I made the experiment and loaded the forum from another machine (logged off state) and it was there the same. So it does indeed look, as if the logged in / out state does not make a difference.

Just for completeness here is the screenshot with the 502 error:

Sucuri 502.jpg

[xenopeek]

That was both maintenance (if we're talking about the forums).

[Cosmo.]

Yes, this makes sense, as I found, that between 12:00 and 12:32 there is a gap in the active topics index.

As discussed on another place it would be needed, to provide another kind of information for the user, e. g. a page which says, that the forum is not reachable for maintenance reasons and that the user shall wait for a quarter of an hour.

[BG405]

a page which says, that the forum is not reachable for maintenance reasons and that the user shall wait for a quarter of an hour.

That would be very useful but would need Sucuri to host the notification page rather than the Forum itself, I think.

[Cosmo.]

but would need Sucuri to host the notification page rather than the Forum itself, I think.

I don't think so. I have seen such a notice in other (also phpBB) forums.