Error 525

[Oscar Not Wilde]

Anyone else lose connection to the site and get an Error 525 page saying that the SSL handshake failed? Later the site becomes available again.

[RyanDean]

Yep. 
Interruption of not-quite an hour for me.

[RadioRob]

This has happened intermittently over the last week or so. When it happens, the server has a very large number of connections stuck in a CLOSE_WAIT status. Restarting the web server (Apache) brings the site online but it does not fix the underlying issue of what caused it in the first place. 

I’m trying several different things, but because it’s so intermittent I don’t know if something I tried actually worked until we go several days without it happening. 

In the mean time, I’m spending much more time monitoring the site so that when it happens I can at least get it back up and try something else. Basically I have to try and watch for it occurring and catch it as quickly as possible to prevent prolonged outages. 

I generally catch it happening within about an hour but until I can get to the root of the problem I’m just watching and waiting unfortunately. 

[+ azdr0710]

@RadioRob  I hope you're helping yourself to some of that gofundme slush fund cash  😁

[RadioRob]

In looking through the raw logs, I saw a couple of things I did not like.  When a file is requested that the site can't find, it is supposed to return a 404 error.  However right now all requests are routing through the PHP parser in order to handle "friendly" URLs.  

This means whenever a file is not found, it's treating it as a dynamic request through the PHP parser.  If there are a large number of these requests at once, it can choke up the system.  I *think* this could be happening as Google or another automated crawler is looking for content or finding broken links.  It would explain why this issue occurs intermittently as it would only happen as the site is being accessed by a search engine when it's looking for a large number of things that might no longer be there.  I've changed how this processes so that the webserver itself handles returning the 404 instead of letting the PHP parser do it.

In addition, I've installed mod_pagespeed.  This is an Apache plugin that helps optimize performance and caching of content locally so it is not dynamically generated for every page load.  Antidotally speaking, browsing the site over the last few minutes appears to be a little more responsive.  I did not do a before/after comparison to benchmark the change, but it looks to be working.  

So let's see how things go.  I'm continuing to monitor and will continue to troubleshoot if I see it continue to occur.  

[+ easygoingpal]

Thanks @RadioRob for all you do and these technical updates...  At the moment, some if the icons on this page appear broken on my Amazon Fire phone...  Cheers

[RadioRob]

4 minutes ago, easygoingpal said:

Thanks @RadioRob for all you do and these technical updates...  At the moment, some if the icons on this page appear broken on my Amazon Fire phone...  Cheers

I've changed some of the image caching settings.  I don't see anymore broken images.  Are you still seeing ones not working?  If so, we might need to try clearing your phone's browser cache.  

[Oscar Not Wilde]

Some avatars don't come thru on mine. And none of those "rank" symbols below the avatars don't show either.

[+ easygoingpal]

1 minute ago, RadioRob said:

I've changed some of the image caching settings.  I don't see anymore broken images.  Are you still seeing ones not working?  If so, we might need to try clearing your phone's browser cache.  

After I click on a broken icon image to like a picture, I can see the icon image on the left, but not on the right where I need to click at the beginning...  I will clear the cache as you suggest...  Thanks!

[RadioRob]

7 minutes ago, easygoingpal said:

After I click on a broken icon image to like a picture, I can see the icon image on the left, but not on the right where I need to click at the beginning...  I will clear the cache as you suggest...  Thanks!

Let me know how it goes.  

[RadioRob]

9 minutes ago, Oscar Not Wilde said:

Some avatars don't come thru on mine. And none of those "rank" symbols below the avatars don't show either.

Can you try clearing your cache (temporary internet files)?  If you let me know what browser you're using, I can give you step by step directions on how to do it.  

[+ easygoingpal]

7 minutes ago, RadioRob said:

Let me know how it goes.  

Clearing the cache fixed the problem...  Back on business...! 😊

[Oscar Not Wilde]

All cleared up now. Thanks, Rob.