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Site Was Wonky; Seems Okay Now

posted by martyb on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the insert-picure-of-big-haired-guy-saying-it-was-aliens.jpg dept.

martyb writes:

We recently had reports of some 'wonkiness' on the site.

Reports started appearing in our #Soylent channel on IRC about 90 minutes ago. For example, the Main Page would load, but parts of the page (such as the slashboxes on the left-hand side) were missing.

I borked my first attempt, but on the second try successfully restarted apache and slashd on both of our front-end servers: hydrogen and fluorine.

All seems to be working correctly now. If this is not the case for you, you may need to clear the browser cache on your system and/or do a hard reload of the page (e.g. Ctrl+F5). If things are still not right, please reply in the comments and/or pop into channel #dev on IRC and let us know.

I'm not sure what precipitated the behavior; I'll leave that to TheMightyBuzzard or one of the sysadmin folk to investigate. I'm sure they'll fill us in on whatever root cause was found.

OTOH, one cannot entirely rule out a spurious gamma ray that flipped a key bit in memory that caused an avalanche of untrapped events.

You can now return to your usual, spirited discussions.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:05AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:05AM (#846459)

    one cannot entirely rule out a spurious gamma ray that flipped a key bit in memory

    If you had ECC memory, you could. If you are renting space in a datacenter, you actually already have ECC memory.

  • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:17AM (6 children)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:17AM (#846464)

    Have we ruled out fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic fields?

    Or a comet passing too close?

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:47AM (4 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:47AM (#846477) Journal

      Wonk doesn't come from space, or magnetic fields. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067992/ [imdb.com]

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by darkfeline on Thursday May 23 2019, @05:51AM

      by darkfeline (1030) on Thursday May 23 2019, @05:51AM (#846538) Homepage
      Have we ruled out the fact that the site is written in Perl?

      Yes, blah blah, good programmers can write good code in any language, but if you're honest with yourself, some languages simply facilitate more bugs that are eliminated completely in other languages (static type checking and garbage collection being the two most prominent features that eliminate bugs).

      I understand that slashdot was Perl as well, and I'm not suggesting rewriting SN, but if you write stuff in certain languages, you're just going to have to accept weird bugs from time to time. I would definitely not write anything "important" in Perl or PHP for example. I would rather opt for Haskell, Go, Ada, or Rust.

      To conclude, I present a Perly gift:

         ''=~(        '(?{'        .('`'        |'%')        .('['        ^'-')
         .('`'        |'!')        .('`'        |',')        .'"'.        '\\$'
         .'=='        .('['        ^'+')        .('`'        |'/')        .('['
         ^'+')        .'||'        .(';'        &'=')        .(';'        &'=')
         .';-'        .'-'.        '\\$'        .'=;'        .('['        ^'(')
         .('['        ^'.')        .('`'        |'"')        .('!'        ^'+')
        .'_\\{'      .'(\\$'      .';=('.      '\\$=|'      ."\|".(      '`'^'.'
      ).(('`')|    '/').').'    .'\\"'.+(    '{'^'[').    ('`'|'"')    .('`'|'/'
      ).('['^'/')  .('['^'/').  ('`'|',').(  '`'|('%')).  '\\".\\"'.(  '['^('(')).
      '\\"'.('['^  '#').'!!--'  .'\\$=.\\"'  .('{'^'[').  ('`'|'/').(  '`'|"\&").(
      '{'^"\[").(  '`'|"\"").(  '`'|"\%").(  '`'|"\%").(  '['^(')')).  '\\").\\"'.
      ('{'^'[').(  '`'|"\/").(  '`'|"\.").(  '{'^"\[").(  '['^"\/").(  '`'|"\(").(
      '`'|"\%").(  '{'^"\[").(  '['^"\,").(  '`'|"\!").(  '`'|"\,").(  '`'|(',')).
      '\\"\\}'.+(  '['^"\+").(  '['^"\)").(  '`'|"\)").(  '`'|"\.").(  '['^('/')).
      '+_,\\",'.(  '{'^('[')).  ('\\$;!').(  '!'^"\+").(  '{'^"\/").(  '`'|"\!").(
      '`'|"\+").(  '`'|"\%").(  '{'^"\[").(  '`'|"\/").(  '`'|"\.").(  '`'|"\%").(
      '{'^"\[").(  '`'|"\$").(  '`'|"\/").(  '['^"\,").(  '`'|('.')).  ','.(('{')^
      '[').("\["^  '+').("\`"|  '!').("\["^  '(').("\["^  '(').("\{"^  '[').("\`"|
      ')').("\["^  '/').("\{"^  '[').("\`"|  '!').("\["^  ')').("\`"|  '/').("\["^
      '.').("\`"|  '.').("\`"|  '$')."\,".(  '!'^('+')).  '\\",_,\\"'  .'!'.("\!"^
      '+').("\!"^  '+').'\\"'.  ('['^',').(  '`'|"\(").(  '`'|"\)").(  '`'|"\,").(
      '`'|('%')).  '++\\$="})'  );$:=('.')^  '~';$~='@'|  '(';$^=')'^  '[';$/='`';

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