Mark Smith (![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png)
mark) wrote in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_maintenance2011-04-24 10:18 am
mark) wrote in dw_maintenance2011-04-24 10:18 am
slowness/downtime
Hi all,
In the past 24 hours we've had some periods of slowness and outright downtime.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fu and I have managed to track it down to a single community that has a comment thread that causes our Apache workers to go into an infinite loop. After enough refreshes, all of our workers are dead, and the site no longer responds.
We're going to start looking into fixing the code so that this doesn't happen. Meanwhile, we're going to work with this community to make sure that they can't break the site while we get an actual, proper code fix working.
Thank you all for your patience as we sort this out.
In the past 24 hours we've had some periods of slowness and outright downtime.
fu and I have managed to track it down to a single community that has a comment thread that causes our Apache workers to go into an infinite loop. After enough refreshes, all of our workers are dead, and the site no longer responds.We're going to start looking into fixing the code so that this doesn't happen. Meanwhile, we're going to work with this community to make sure that they can't break the site while we get an actual, proper code fix working.
Thank you all for your patience as we sort this out.
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I count that as a net win. :)
Seriously! We do not blame you guys! We do not blame anybody. The problem was there, whether or not we knew about it. Whenever you're dealing with edge cases or people using the site in a way that is way outside the way that most other people use it, there's always the chance for bugs to crop up, because nobody has ever tested those particular combinations. It's why there are always bugs that don't show up until we push code live, because our users use the site in ways we never would have dreamed, much less tested.
So do not feel like a moron! Feel like somebody who just contributed to making DW better for everybody, because you totally did. :)
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Uh. Good thing it's Three Weeks, so my shame and related Issues aren't allowed to drive me away from the site for a month or so to recover? I have obligations. ^^;;
And, uh. I was going to buy a seed account anyway, 'cause apart from this whole breaking it thing I do love this site like burning - but instead of waiting to see if I can nab one I'm gonna go buy the DW points now, so even if I don't get one you guys get my support.
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And yeah, Three Weeks obligations, so. Around anyway.
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In the IRC channels where many of the developers hang out (I am not a developer, but I make bad puns with many of them) there is a bot that lets the whole chat know when a new public bug has been filed in the bug-tracker. Occasionally, not as often these days because there aren't as many good ones, but sometimes, there is cheering, actual cheering, when a new bug is filed. This is because the bug getting filed means that there is enough information about a problem to formally enter it in the system, and because filing the bug is the first step to getting it fixed, and having it fixed means that no one else will ever be able to (deliberately or accidentally) do the same thing and cause the same problem ever again.
This is definitely a \o/ YAAAAAY!! \o/ bug.
I don't know if you've ever had the experience when writing fic, where there's something, and you're working on making it the best writing you can possibly manage, and you hand it off to a beta, and the beta points out something that screws everything up, but when you fix it, it is going to make things more awesome than you dreamed was possible? And you're a little sorry that you made a mistake, but you know no writer's perfect so it's not like you're the only one who's done something similar, and it's going to be a lot of work to fix, but once you fix it, it's going to be better than you had thought you could write, and it's exciting and the writing to fix it will be the fun kind of challenge? I would compare some bug report experiences to that. And in this analogy, you would be the beta who pointed it out, not the writer who made the mistake or the writer who's going to have to fix it.
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Um. If you say so? And yeah, at least it was this weekend, not next. That would have been. Um. Bad. Very very bad.
I will try and take your words to heart!
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Once before open beta, I managed to partially break the importer because I'd copied an email into my LJ and between one thing and another LJ told the importer that it was sending an email to import, so the entry page confused the importer a whole, whole lot.
And then the devs fixed it and everything was ok again!
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i'm currently spending a lot of time playing the alpha2 release of FreeCol, and trying to find bugs. The obvious ones I don't need to report ("um, guys, why aren't my horses breeding/ That's kinda important"). So I'm playing with some batshit insane strategies to see if anything weird comes up that the Devs have never seen before. Thus far, I've found one thing.
The lead Dev has thanked me profusely (because, seriously, it took a lot of weird setup to find this thing, although I wasn't looking for that specifically I was just trying to break the game).
Now, it's fixed in trunk so when 0.10.beta comes out the game might actually be fully playable.
Dreamwidth is still in beta, we're still testing the servers, the code, the whatever.
You have found a bug. One they hadn't seen before, at all, one that shouldn't exist.
This is a Good Thing.
Because now thye can fix this bug, and possibly make sure that a) you can't do it again but more importantly, b) other people doing something similar but different don't do it again.
Congratulations, you have broken the site in a way they can fix. Really, that's a good thing to do.
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