Condor Watch Talk

Anyone getting white screens?

  • wreness by wreness moderator

    Hi all
    This week I am having a heck of a time loading the Recent page. All I get is a blank, white screen. I have to reload it many time before the stuff fills in. If I go to my mail icon (which pulls up the Profile page) I'll get the same thing and often none of my messages will appear until I go back and forth or refresh a bunch of times but I have better luck with that than I do the Recent page. It is glacially slow here filling things in and sometimes never does.

    I'm on Win7/Chrome but it's the same on IE9.

    Carrion!

    Posted

  • yshish by yshish in response to wreness's comment.

    Hi @Wreness

    Yes, I get the blank screen every day at all Recent/Talk pages (at all the projects).

    It is a very old bug which is used to appear always at the same time but the time has changed lately. We're measuring the response in several nice graphs (Click on the link, scroll down and look for the blue lines which mean Condor Watch!): http://ziman.functor.sk/zoo/

    It's not on our side:/ All of us have it. The developers have been aware of the issue since May(?). Perhaps have no idea how to fix it.

    Z.

    Posted

  • vjbakker by vjbakker scientist

    I too have this problem lately, mostly (or only??) at night (eg 9-12 US MT), which is a key time for me on the site, so it's frustrating. I use WIn8/Firefox, but have the same experience on Chrome. Agree it's very frustrating. Z, thanks for the info -- I'll report it if only to make a bit more noise about it.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    I've been making noise about it for two months. 😦 The problem is that it happens so intermittently that it's not really reproducible in front of a developer. Errors that aren't reproducible are apparently really hard to fix. I can continue to pester...

    (Also, I've just learned that using Japanese-style emoticons can break the entire comment box.)

    Posted

  • ElisabethB by ElisabethB moderator

    It used to be a GZ only problem and especialy at 12 noon for me (11 GMT) We thought at the time it was a back-up problem, but now it has spread all over the Zoo and there is no specific time anymore ! You can stiil read your pm's if you go to a very quiet project. And clicking on Discussion boards works as well. You just cannot see the recents and your profile

    Posted

  • yshish by yshish in response to ElisabethB's comment.

    Hi,

    I'm pretty sure it wasn't just the GZ problem, but has always been a problem of more projects (at least of all the ones I have been participated in) but each of them has the response time a bit different (See the graphs, however I'm sorry we haven't started the measuring earlier than since July).

    Yes, the time when it used to stop working was always at the 11 GMT. Recently it has changed for 4 GMT. I can't see when it exactly was but can figure it out if necessary. Could be the change caused by some update?

    Darren, have the developers tried to reproduce it at the critical time when it doesn't load? It means f.e. at 4 a.m. (GMT)? Look at the graph for the last week, you can see that the no response 'peak' is every day at the same time. They must be able to see it happens:)

    Anyway, thanks for pestering, but please, be nice to them!😃

    Zuzi

    Posted

  • wreness by wreness moderator

    It's interesting that this has been going on in other areas for a long time. I hadn't noticed the blank pages in any other areas I volunteered (but some of them had really severe issues that never went away)

    From what I understand they really hadn't done any serious overhauling here on CW until recently and it seems that's when the issues started so I think Zusi has a point about it being in the Updates. Did you notice (Els and Zuzi) if the other areas got worse after any kind of "big" work or additions there? Did CW get added in some way to the server or area that these already glitching areas are in and so we are now having problems? So much has been added to Zoo so quickly (and a few big projects finished - yay Seafloor explorer, my former haunt) I'm amazed the servers didn't demand a vacation.

    Anyway, I was doing OK here until about half an hour ago (10:30 pm CT, usa. And yes I'm with VJ, it's bad here around 9-1 AM CT) so did some digging. I'm on Chrome and Win7 (sorry to bore folks with this geek stuff! 😃

    I started looking at the code and found two errors that repeated on the blank pages:

    One:
    GET http://www.go.ogle-anal.ytics.com/ga.js?_=1418705005809 net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT

    (periods inserted and links disabled so you don't click on it and are blinded by a giant page of teeny code)

    This is caused by programs like Ghostery or ad blocking programs. A "fix" is to allow Google Analytics or to Whitelist Zooniverse.org or the specific sites you are in. However I've always had those two programs running and CW is the only site that gives me the blank pages. When I changed my settings it didn't help, but dont know if it'd help anyone else. I don't know if Zoo added more aggressive trackers to their code that would effect this.

    Two:
    GET https://api.zooniv.erse.org/projects/con.dor/talk/rec.ents 502 (Bad Gateway)

    (api-7055556d2e7f0bb78942f4b7f025d74d.js:16 )

    I'd think this is most likely the problem. When it's only at one site then a piece(s) of the equipment is failing/overloaded.

    I'm sure Zoo has massive security and scanning going on and would know if there's some quiet virus or malware percolating on their servers?

    I'm surprized they can't replicate the issue if Els, Yshish, VJ and I all experience it. Send the Devs over to one of our places and they can buy us lunch/dinner/clean our places for us and we'll show them 😃 I'm wondering if they have a hard time replicating it because they're not out here trying to access things.

    Don't know if this is at all helpful. Thanks DZM!

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    According to one of our developers who has been looking into the issue of slow-loading Recent pages, quote, "it seems to be caused by the daily backup putting extra strain on the database."

    There's a new backup system scheduled to go into place soon, hopefully by early January. Hopefully that will fix this!!

    Posted

  • yshish by yshish in response to DZM's comment.

    OH, THANK YOU! That would be great since the time when it doesn't load is the most important part of the day for me to check the Talk questions.

    BTW, I said them that it has to have something with the backups in the spring already!:]

    Posted

  • ElisabethB by ElisabethB moderator

    Yippee !

    Posted

  • CatchATiger by CatchATiger

    Good news that they will get it fixed soon. It seems to be worse lately.

    wreness called it - equipment overload.

    Posted

  • Canmore1919 by Canmore1919

    OK I have to add my 2 cents worth - these white screens are becoming intolerable! I get them mainly on CW talk page, and occasionally on the classifying pages. Often it is a partial white screen on classifying pages. Problem is much worse when I am on system in evenings. (2200MST)

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    I'll let everyone know once we've rolled out that update; hopefully it will fix things!!

    Posted