Varnish/503 errors

[denise]

Well, the good news is that Dreamwidth is hopping this week! The bad news is that our recent changes to make the site auto-scale during periods of high server and database load have apparently been too conservative, and that's leading to the Varnish/503 errors that people are getting. (The mysterious ones that say "backend fetch failed, guru meditation error" -- the error message is highly unhelpful, but in our defense y'all aren't supposed to see it!)

We are continuing to tweak things to improve performance, and we apologize for the errors. We'll have them fixed as soon as we can.

Comments

[stormehowl]

Thank you for the update on what is going on! I'm glad DW is hopping!

[dewline]

Okay, that explains it. I'll post a link to this entry on my own account, just in case it helps reduce distractions at your end of things.

[nyankoframe]

It's nice to see that the DW error messages are inspired by the Amiga :D

[denise]

It's not just us -- that's the error message from Varnish, which is a popular system that a lot of sites use -- but yes, I've always been amused by that! (Our 404s, however, are all us, if you've ever hit a page that doesn't exist on DW. We should add some more options.)

[nyankoframe]

That's no moon, it's a 404 - OK, I'm silently dying of laughter in the SF Public Library, which might not be the best idea. :P

[pauamma]

Here are some (old) suggestions from the peanut gallery: https://404.dreamwidth.org/431.html and http://wiki.dreamwidth.net/wiki/index.php/Meme_404s. (I don't think all of them were accepted, and not all may be acceptable.)

[dewline]

*attack of nostalgia upon the brain of an animation school student who worked with Amiga computers at the school's lab*

[frith]

It was an unusual error message. ^_^ Thanks!

[shirebound]

Thank you for your wonderful communications!

[muccamukk]

Thanks for the update. Not that I don't find the site's back end fetching, but seeing it is getting a bit old.

[ilyena_sylph]

Where would you like your internet delivered?

As you just won one.

[chanter1944]

*falls over laughing!* Nice one!

I debated saying something about wishing someone would fetch my back end if they truly wanted it, because I don't. Ahem.

[filialucis]

DW needs a "Like" button just for this comment! 😂

[gwyn]

Thank you for the explanation--I thought it was just me!!

[bluedreaming]

Thank you!

[ysilme]

Thank you for letting us know! I could access this post only after the tenth try or so, but the subject line in my notification was helpful to give me an idea already about what was happening.

[ride_4ever]

Thank you kindly for the update!

[threesecrets]

Well, I'm glad y'all are getting the traffic you deserve, but fingers crossed it's not too difficult to adjust. :3

Also just as a note: I've noticed that when I finally *do* get a post to go through, it then posts it two or three times. Even when I've been checking the base page to make sure it's not a situation of "it actually posted, but here's an error message anyway". Probably nothing useful, but thought I'd let you guys know anyway.

Thanks for the transparency, though!

And happy holidays, ofc. :)

[trobadora]

Thank you for the update!

[tellshannon815]

I wondered what that was all about, thanks for clarifying!

[ex_flameandsong751]

Thank you kindly.

[tamena]

thank you for letting us know =) I was starting to think it was me!

[meningioma]

Thank you for the update!! :D

[montuos]

Well, dang! I missed the "...guru meditation error" part when I got the error! ;D

Although lacking in detail, the message was helpful enough for me: it allowed me to infer it wasn't something I did, and that something on the other end had to change, so I waited and reloaded and everything was fine.

Anyway, this is comment is for my often felt but not expressed often enough appreciation for Dreamwidth being so transparent and responsive when things break. <3

[kaishin108]

Thank you!

[chanter1944]

Oh is that what those errors were about! Thank you for sorting it out. :)

[wantedonvoyage]

Don't sweat it; i enjoyed the mental image of a guru trying to meditate but getting distracted by impending errands, grocery list items and they lyrics to songs that were popular when (s)he was in high school.

[mirrorofsmoke]

I use a screen reader. I misread it as "Guru meditation sit."and I was like "Okay. Guru wants to sit while meditating."

[mirrorofsmoke]

I laughed so much at the guru meditation bit.

[pepperpot504]

That happened to me for a few minutes yesterday but eventually I was able to post.

[virgosplaining]

Thanks for the update! I noticed it would happen more during some periods than others and wondered if it had to do with site traffic.

[weofodthignen]

Thanks for keeping us informed and for working on it. And for the apparently too conservative efforts to anticipate this :-) Should we write less? '-) jk.
M

[vanessagalore]

I admire your dedication to transparent, user-friendly social media when all around us are sites scraping our personal info and actively supporting anti-democracy movements and/ or scamming us with subscriptions and hidden fees. I always recommend Dreamwidth when people bitch and moan about evil Twitter.

[kore]

I was going to try to say something like this but you said it much better!

[chanter1944]

Exactly this! :D

[runpunkrun]

Thanks for the status update! That error message was mysterious indeed.

[goodbyebird]

I've noticed the daily post average has been over 5k for a while now. Good to see some folks returning <3

[falena]

Thanks for your hard work and stellar communication!

[sparowe]

Thank you for the update! I was nostalgia reading some old RPG accounts and was worried they'd broken. This makes me feel much better. <3

[mdlbear]

Thank you for the update! One more reason I love this site.

[acelightning73]

I had to check with "IsItup?" to find out it wasn't my computer malfunctioning, although it kept trying to tell me to reset the DNS.

[discodiva76]

Yeah I just lost an important update to my post 😔

[pronker]

Best wishes on the work upholding this fine site - I'm looking forward to January's Snowflake community fest ... also, that's one fine error message! :D