Blue Hawk Down April 30, 2002 1:44 AM   Subscribe

"Error Occurred While Processing Request" - Is it just me, or is Metafilter down?
posted by pracowity to Bugs at 1:44 AM (34 comments total)

Me, too. I get the MeFi page, blank, except for the sideblog with the aforementioned blitherty blatherty.
posted by luser at 1:46 AM on April 30, 2002


I got the gobbledegook, too. Thought it was just IE freaking out on me as it does from time to time.
posted by gutenberg at 1:59 AM on April 30, 2002


Matt previously indicated that he was planning on doing some server work tonight. I suspect the outage will be rectified shortly.
posted by johnnyace at 2:07 AM on April 30, 2002


actually, the error is something else. a sql server database's transaction log needs to be backed up every so often or it fills, causing the database to lock up. that's what it looks the error is. just needs to be backed up or truncated.
posted by eyeballkid at 2:09 AM on April 30, 2002


OK, here we go...

Administrator! Please hope me!

(Hope I got that right)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:17 AM on April 30, 2002


Fuck this shit. I quit. No more from me. This is it.
posted by crasspastor at 2:40 AM on April 30, 2002


I hope this isn't a thread-end or I'll have no part in it. If it isn't, though, did any other incompetent half-expect the rest of the front page to load, hoping it was just a sideblog snag?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:46 AM on April 30, 2002


That is what I expected Miguel, until I looked at the error and realized it was something I had not seen on MeFi before. Can someone explain why it might only show up in the sidebar? My whole day is going to be off balance and this coffee doesn't taste quite right.
posted by anathema at 2:57 AM on April 30, 2002


Funny that the text ad survived.
posted by anathema at 2:59 AM on April 30, 2002


half my team is off with flu today. this has come at a good time.

i shall attempt to tackle the in-tray.
posted by Frasermoo at 3:02 AM on April 30, 2002


I know nothing about Coldfusion of database driven sites, but I would guess that the error shows up in the sidebar like that because the call that caused the error occurred in the admanager database, which is probably used to log the ad displays or something. Coldfusion stopped rendering when it hit the error, after rendering the stylesheet and the top of the page and opening the sidebar DIV tag, and just threw up every closing tag it knew of (look at the source, it's pretty cool) and printed the error. The stylesheet got printed though, and the div was opened, so the error got put where the sidebar usually goes. Nothing's wrong with the actual metafilter databases, and in fact, lofi mefi is still there right now.
posted by Nothing at 3:54 AM on April 30, 2002


I suppose now would be the time for me to write highly exciting specifications.
posted by pracowity at 4:05 AM on April 30, 2002


Hope this doesn't extend my ten days....
posted by ParisParamus at 4:14 AM on April 30, 2002


</td></td></td></th></th></th>
</tr></tr></tr></table></table></table>
</a></ABBREV></acronym></address>
</applet></AU></b></BANNER></big></blink>
</blockquote></BQ></caption></center></cite>
</code></COMMENT></del></dfn></dir></div>
</dl></em></FIG></FN></font></form></frame>
</frameset></h1></h2></h3></h4></h5></h6>
</head></i></ins></kbd></listing></map>
</MARQUEE></menu></multicol></nobr></noframes>
</noscript></NOTE></ol></p></param></PERSON>
</plaintext></pre></q></s></samp></script>
</select></small></strike></strong></sub></sup>
</table></td></textarea></th></title></tr></tt>
</u></ul></var></wbr></xmp><html><head><title>

that's some serious tag closing.
posted by nedrichards at 4:19 AM on April 30, 2002 [1 favorite]


I miss test patterns and the Star Spangled Banner.
posted by ParisParamus at 4:21 AM on April 30, 2002 [1 favorite]


not sure if this helps or not, but when i click my link for the mefi sidebar i get to see front page content, dated from april 30.
posted by kev23f at 4:26 AM on April 30, 2002


Yup. Both the sidebar and lofi are working for me too.
posted by anathema at 4:30 AM on April 30, 2002


Yes, The sidebar and the lowfi version are not affected because they do not have the ads and therefore do not call the "admanager" tables the error message says is the culprit. Or so I assume.
posted by Nothing at 4:32 AM on April 30, 2002


lofi makes me feel all weird and jittery. Even more than usual, I mean.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:38 AM on April 30, 2002


and if you really miss the colour blue you can see it by looking at the april archives, which have all of todays content too. Anyway, i'm off to get some lunch, its a beautiful day in dublin.
posted by kev23f at 4:39 AM on April 30, 2002


The problem with lofi-mefi is that when you click into a thread, you are returned to the customary blue pages, and when you click the "Home" link are not returned to lofi-mefi but to the regular main page.
posted by briank at 6:21 AM on April 30, 2002


However, Lo-Fi does show you deleted threads, although you can't access them. So maybe that makes up for it by allowing you to engage in wild, pointless, and baseless speculation about the reasons behind the deletions.

I'm always up for that!
posted by umberto at 6:57 AM on April 30, 2002


Use your browser's back button, briank, that works, as do the basics, posting, commenting etc.
posted by bittennails at 7:10 AM on April 30, 2002


Well I feel stupid. At the end of the error msg it says to contact the site admin and report the error. I'd gone to #mefi to see if someone else had already reported it, but I didn't think to check MetaTalk. Looks like I sent Matt an email for no reason, which is something that in the past I go out of my way to avoid. I try only to bother him when I feel I have reason to, assuming he gets enough emails from weirdoes like me and so I opt to leave him alone as much as possible.

But after emailing him about the error this morning I doubletaked and shrugged and decided to see if MeTa is still there. Come to think of it, Matt probably checks MeFi each morning before he checks his own email. It was dumb of me to think I could prove helpful. Like I said. I feel stupid. But this is nothing new.
posted by ZachsMind at 8:01 AM on April 30, 2002


All I get is Cannot Find Server.
posted by StOne at 8:13 AM on April 30, 2002


All I get is a sort of sneezing sound, then my monitor vibrates for about 3 seconds, then it goes into sleep mode. That's gotta be SQL.
posted by UncleFes at 8:34 AM on April 30, 2002


OK, it's back...
posted by StOne at 8:45 AM on April 30, 2002


Nothing: your guess is spot on---that is just how ColdFusion deals with errors. As for the actual error itself, I have to admit I sort of laughed when I saw it, because where I work, we do a lot of SQL Server stuff, and so it was no surprise to see that the transaction log ate the hard drive---they have a nasty habit of doing that, sometimes getting to be quite a lot bigger than even the database being logged. To sum up, this is all Microsoft's fault. You killed MetaFilter, you bastards!

There's a collection of Microsoft links on the topic about 2/3 of the way through this newsletter, in case our fearless leader should like to peruse them, although I'd bet he's all too familiar with the problem as well.
posted by Sapphireblue at 8:46 AM on April 30, 2002


Well, now we all know what time Matt gets up in the morning.
posted by yhbc at 8:51 AM on April 30, 2002


Michelle is right, the transaction logs are gigantic, on the order of several gigabytes, when the source db is only in the tens-to-hundreds of megabytes.

I'll keep looking into truncating them and alleviating the space on the hard drive.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:13 AM on April 30, 2002


Well, it's a cool way of dealing with errors as it doesn't really put anyone out. Good for ColdFusion.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:59 AM on April 30, 2002


It's back again, should someone email Matt?
posted by machaus at 7:31 PM on April 30, 2002


I guess one person should, in the meanwhile just use lofi or the archives.
posted by riffola at 7:48 PM on April 30, 2002


Skippy deserves a bonus.
posted by riffola at 8:20 PM on April 30, 2002


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