BoundForum Problems/Solutions/Ideas

[gaggedutopia]

I am not sure what is causing the problem yet, but it shouldn't be from any overloading.  I am able to reproduce the issue, but have not nailed down what is causing it yet.

[Franzia]

Also~ I couldn't get this site at all since yesterday evening until just a few minutes ago....was it down?

(Once again my web access was fine for everything else)

[BlaM]

Got the same problems here. Can't see anything obvious in neither PING or TRACEROUTE. You seem to use Windows / IIS as your webserver. When you type "netstat -na" you should get a list of your current (IP) connections to the outside world. How many are there? Are there many in state "WAITING", "FIN_WAIT" or "TIME_WAIT"? How many? Does the number of lines change or does it stay locked at the same value over a long time?

[Cape Cod Richie]

A couple of hours ago I couldn't get on at all. Page wouldn't load. Other sites OK then.

XP with Internet Explorer. Obviously OK now.

[Housebound]

I keep getting 'empty reply from server' error messages, cured by a reload - sometimes the background of the first page accessed fails to appear.

[gaggedutopia]

[quote]You seem to use Windows / IIS as your webserver.[/quote]Yes - I run IIS 6 and W2k3.  I took a look at the netstat and it ranges from minute to minute, even second to second.  Certain connections fall into Time_Wait and Fin_Wait, but never for long.  They are usually gone after a reload or two.  I have not seen any with simply Waiting however.It ranges from 50-150 connections, most having multiple connections at a time (usually 2-5).[quote]I couldn't get this site at all since yesterday evening[/quote]The sites were down most of the night unfortunately.  I was playing with Firewall settings to see if the connection issues were from DoS type attacks and didn't notice it was blocking all traffic until this morning.GaggedUtopia2006-10-08 15:58:53

[BlaM]

[quote="GaggedUtopia"] [quote]You seem to use Windows / IIS as your webserver.[/quote]
Yes - I run IIS 6 and W2k3.  I took a look at the netstat and it ranges from minute to minute, even second to second.  Certain connections fall into Time_Wait and Fin_Wait, but never for long.  They are usually gone after a reload or two.  I have not seen any with simply Waiting however.It ranges from 50-150 connections, most having multiple connections at a time (usually 2-5).[/quote]  Not sure if "WAITING" exists. I just guessed that from my german Windows edition, where it says "WARTEND". That might be microsoft's translation of "TIME_WAIT", though. I was asking because I have seen a similar behaviour on Win2000/IIS6 Webservers. That problem appeared out of nowhere, CPU was < 20% on average, RAM was okay. Just traffic (number of visitors) was noticeably higher than usually. The servers just stopped answering to new TCP/IP connections. One thing we have been able to see was, that we always had the same number of "TIME_WAIT" entries in the netstat list. Back then we've been able to at least improve our server's responsiveness by tweaking some settings to go from TIME_WAIT to actually closing unused connections a bit faster. Not sure if that's connected to your problem though  If I'd have to guess, I'd also tend to say "DoS", either systematic or by accident (wrong settings - homemade bottleneck, e.g. firewall). But you seem to have gotten so far yourself.

[feline]

i am seeing the same problem a lot.  the fact i am trying to catch up on everything i have missed is not helping.now and then the page "part" loads.  the normal form is that the thread loads, but in the quick reply section the white text entry area is replaced with an error web page.i have also had a few cases where the text and images load, but there is no theme, and everything is coming up in the wrong font.  i am assuming this is because the CSS (if that is the right term) is not being picked up.this is using Firefox 1.5.0.7 running under WinXP pro SP2 on a 2meg link.  other web pages and downloads are working fine.is there any other information i can offer that might help?

[feline]

as luck would have it it happened again, while trying to post the above.  this thread loaded, but it took 4 or 5 refreshes to get page 2 to appear.  when i pressed post reply (using the quick reply box) i got a Firefox error page saying:The connection was resetThe connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.    *   The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.    *   If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network          connection.    *   If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

[gaggedutopia]

It is a problem on the server end and not the client - I can reproduce it on several machines with different clients.  Unlike feline's expereince, once the page load properly, the session continues to work fine.I don't think it is a connection issue right now, only because I have been running perfmon for hours now and the peek connections/sec has been 24.  The server has 4GB ram and dual Xeons /w a Gigabit Intel NIC on a 10m/bit connection.  One symptom that is strange is the IIS logs.  When there is a incomplete page load (ie: CSS files don't load, but rest of page and images do), I don't see a GET request in the log.I am sort of baffled by this issue because this is the 4th server for these sites I have built up.  The 3 before never had any issues, let alone like this. 

[phoebe]

Hey GU, whatever you're doing is working quite well!The pages are opening almost instantaneously and hitting the back button is also working with the same speed.So however you're holding the antenna now, don't move... the reception's just fine... <grin>phoebephoebe2006-10-08 20:53:01

[BlaM]

[quote="GaggedUtopia"]One symptom that is strange is the IIS logs.  When there is a incomplete page load (ie: CSS files don't load, but rest of page and images do), I don't see a GET request in the log.[/quote]  Probably IIS does not even see that there is a request - I'd most definitely search for a problem at TCP/IP level (i.e. network), not in IIS.

[BlaM]

[quote="BlaM"]Probably IIS does not even see that there is a request - I'd most definitely search for a problem at TCP/IP level (i.e. network), not in IIS. [/quote]  I had a quick chat with our sysadmin. He said that our problem was solved by changing some settings in the firewall: - Concurrent INCOMING sessions allowed: 256- Concurrent OUTGOING sessions allowed: 64 Not sure if that helps you in any way with your problem. Not even sure if your problem is the same as the one we had  - just the symptoms are the same... However that's as much as I can find...

[gaggedutopia]

Hi BlaM - It actually does help in confirming my suspicions of the problem.  I spent most of the day yesterday looking into the issue and am 90% sure it is a TCP/IP issue.  I am sure it is not coincidence that this server is running a different firewall then my other three servers as well.Thanks for the help.

[Franzia]

I'm getting so many timeouts I can barely get in here, but when I do it does load really fast (altho' I still have to scroll the posts if using AOL browser due to CSS but that's an old issue).

[Housebound]

Quite a (variable) few of the small icons (page furniture) are failing to load. Different effects on different page.


-EDIT- Submitting this post generated two 'Empty rely from server' errors,

On getting the message added to the page the 'Delete'
icon failed to load.

Have fun Housebound2006-10-10 10:04:04

[BlaM]

Seems to work for me, now. Didn't have any timeouts or problems with loading RSS-Feeds today - and it's already 4pm in germany [Edit]Okay, changed my opinion. Now had some problems actually accessing the page with Firefox.BTW: Good morning to the U.S. and Canada, even if it's still very early ;)BlaM2006-10-10 10:21:12

[gaggedutopia]

I am shipping a firewall to my colo company - they have agreed to letme use my own at no additional cost which was very generous of them.If it is a TCP issue, there shouldn't be any more issues after it isinstalled.  This is the same one I used with my old server.

[gaggedutopia]

Well, it is a little premature to tell for sure, but I might have found the problem.  I usually can reproduce the issue within a minute and I have not been able to for about 20.  I made a little batch file that loads 20 copies of my websites at once and no failures (before about every 3rd would fail).I did some digging and found a bunch of entries attached to the winsock driver that I didn't think were helping things.  Particually my anti-virus client.  I uninstalled the client and things have been running better since then.In either case, the firewall will be installed tomorrow (forum will be down for a bit, but hopefully not more then 30 minutes or so). 

[Housebound]

Running perfect and fast today - Thanks