Server Update Announcement

February 7, 2005 3:15 PM

I just updated the server to CFMX 7. If you see any obvious weird errors, toss them in here.
posted by mathowie (staff) to Uptime at 3:15 PM (39 comments total)

I just got the CF markup for the main metatalk page in my browser. That was pretty weird.
posted by timeistight at 3:44 PM on February 7, 2005

I'm getting only CF markup on the front page of metafilter, bet metatalk was fine a second ago...
posted by cell at 3:47 PM on February 7, 2005

Yeah, it appears that some things didn't take, so I was futzing with various settings. For about a minute there, no CF pages were parsing.

It's oddly fast in its half-upgraded state though, which is weird.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:53 PM on February 7, 2005

User page comments are repeating one after another for me, rather than listing the number of comments in a thread. See here.
posted by interrobang at 4:20 PM on February 7, 2005

yeah, interrobang, that's a new bug that I introduced when folks asked for pagination. I'll fix it soon, and it's not related to this upgrade.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:25 PM on February 7, 2005

Oh, okay. Just doing my best to help out.
posted by interrobang at 4:27 PM on February 7, 2005

This qualifies as a wierd error, I suppose: click this link to a MeFi thread from November, then click on the poster's username ("posted by blahblahblah"). The link does not lead to blahblahblah's userpage as expected.
posted by killdevil at 4:30 PM on February 7, 2005

I'm getting a lot of Jrun errors right now, too.
posted by interrobang at 4:45 PM on February 7, 2005

Yeah weird, the speed was short lived and now the server is again spiking. I'm still trying to complete the full upgrade, so expect some downtime tonight off and on until that is complete
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:20 PM on February 7, 2005

Metatalk home page was giving me some random Cold Fusion errors, but it seems to be running smoothly now.

Maybe this is just my imagination, or maybe everyone's still away because of the "BE RIGHT BACK" message, but the server seems positively snappy right now.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:31 PM on February 7, 2005

ok, things should be mostly back to normal. I've got to redo all the non-logged in users pages right now.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:40 PM on February 7, 2005

Spell check is delivering an error:
Error processing CFX custom tag "CFX_CFX_JSpellCheck".
The CFX custom tag "CFX_CFX_JSpellCheck" was not found in the custom tag database.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:09 PM on February 7, 2005

hmm, seems like the new server doesn't like the spell checker code
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:32 PM on February 7, 2005

Here's a pointless demo of a new CFMX 7 feature: MetaFilter as a PDF.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:31 PM on February 7, 2005

That's way groovy, Matt. Maybe helpful for some people at work, too.
posted by taz at 11:58 PM on February 7, 2005

No AskMe?
posted by NortonDC at 6:01 AM on February 8, 2005

nevermind.
posted by NortonDC at 6:01 AM on February 8, 2005

MetaFilter as a PDF

Hrm. That was MetaFilter as a Macromedia Flash app. Now, I'm a big fan of Flash, so please don't take this the wrong way, but that was slow as dogshit. If there's a way to export directly to PDF, however, that would be k-r4d. New features or not, if it's newer, it's more stable, right? :)
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:24 AM on February 8, 2005

The logout link in the blue isn't working:

Not Found

The requested URL /index.cfmi was not found on this server.
Apache/2.0.52 (Win32) JRun/4.0 Server at www.metafilter.com Port 80

Works fine in the grey.
posted by ursus_comiter at 7:34 AM on February 8, 2005

You can create the cfreport as a PDF. Just set the format attribute to 'PDF'.

I'm disappointed to hear that people are still seeing JRun errors after the upgrade, since JRun has had a lot of fixes in the past year. Note that the JRun errors could be caused by a non-JRun problem, a problem with memory or native code. This page gives more information as well as a way to put up a custom error page.

(Info from your local lurking Macromedia employee)
posted by luyon at 7:49 AM on February 8, 2005

You can create the cfreport as a PDF.

This would be incredible for archiving purposes, particularly since Google et. most can index PDF's. Can you script automatic generation of reports to file? Then all you'd have to do is archive each user's contributions per month (but keep the current month as-is) and you could create searchable PDF journals of each user's archives. This would reduce a lot of database strain on the server and a killer feature to boot.

But my pony quotient is already used up (thanks again for the frontpage search, Matt!)
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:10 AM on February 8, 2005

Oh yeah, I changed to flashpaper to test it, since PDF + Firefox = totaly firery wreck.

Thanks for the tips luyon, as I've told a couple of macromedia folks before, I'd welcome any help and discounts and I'd be more than happy to be a case study and/or advertise "built with coldfusion" doodads in the footer. While this isn't a business-class website by any means, I was just a lowly html/photoshop guy that wanted to build a better slashdot in 1999, and in about four weeks I had the first version of metafilter done (and the last computer language I learned before CF was BASIC on a Apple ][ in the early 80s). So yeah, I stick with CF because I still like it and I can do most anything in it. The new version seems quite a bit more stable and speedy so far, though I could probably stand to fix a bunch of the memory errors that keep cropping up.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:53 AM on February 8, 2005

It takes several attempts for me to access AskMe, whether from MeTa or from entering the url manually into my broswer. Eventually it works but I recieve this error at the bottom of the page:

500 The value "****" cannot be converted to a number
The value "****" cannot be converted to a number
posted by mlis at 10:34 AM on February 8, 2005

MLIS, are you logged in or not when you see that error? I haven't seen it myself before.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:51 AM on February 8, 2005

Logged in. Should I email you a screen shot?
posted by mlis at 10:56 AM on February 8, 2005

the last computer language I learned before CF was BASIC on a Apple ][ in the early 80s). So yeah, I stick with CF because I still like it and I can do most anything in it.

I'm pretty sure this has been asked before, but I don't remember the answer: Matt, have you ever considered re-coding everything into PHP+Postgre/MySQL? All your layout would basically remain the same, you'd just get the data from a different source.

Or is this a case of "if it ain't broke..."?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:26 AM on February 8, 2005

PHP is so 2004. All the cool kids are using Ruby On Rails.
posted by timeistight at 11:45 AM on February 8, 2005

C_D, the biggest drawback to going with a new language is that I would be totally lost in it. I know that others could chip in and build stuff, but I couldn't just think up a new feature on a saturday night and have something new on sunday morning if I had to rely on others to do all the coding for me.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:34 PM on February 8, 2005

I was just a lowly html/photoshop guy that wanted to build a better slashdot in 1999

I'd love to see you fight Rob Malda. I hate that guy!
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 1:33 PM on February 8, 2005

When I use "Search Metafilter" and look for a user, I'm getting "Nothing was found" results, even though I'm searching on a user name that I know exists (mateo, furtive, fenriq).

The problem seems to be with the time constraint. fenriq shows up in the "in the past year" search, but not "in the past month", although he did a FPP on February 4th. mateo is a similar situation.

Since the link provided if the search is successful is to the user profile, not to threads, it's unclear why time-dependency is relevant at all when searching - shouldn't the search be of the table where profiles are stored?

(That search page does say There are currently some issues with the search results, which are being worked out now. And this problem may have nothing to do with CFMX 7 ... just saying .. )
posted by WestCoaster at 2:15 PM on February 8, 2005

WestCoaster, you're not searching for what they posted; you're searching for their user pages. Each those users has been a member for at least a year, so you'd need a "since day one" search to find them. It's always worked that way.

Once you've found their user pages, you can list their posts and comments.
posted by timeistight at 2:22 PM on February 8, 2005

mathowie, I'll present the facts to some folks I know here and see if they can offer any more help. I didn't do this in the past since I assumed it was a "upgrade and it'll go away" problem, knowing the work that's gone into the JRun connectors in the past year. I'll email you when I hear anything.
posted by luyon at 2:26 PM on February 8, 2005

That "Ruby on Rails" is so totally cool. I was telling everyone I knew two years ago to take a look at Ruby. I'm glad to see it catching on, and especially as part of such a smart architecture.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:32 PM on February 8, 2005

All the cool kids are using Ruby On Rails.

def Flavor_of_the_Month
end

the biggest drawback to going with a new language is that I would be totally lost in it

I completely understand, but know that it's a very easy language to pick up, particularly if you've ever scripted anything in JavaScript. I'm not certain I could point to any direct reasons why you should switch if CF is working for you, however I'd put good money that it's significantly lower system overhead. And no more JRun errors.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:43 PM on February 8, 2005

I can't access the MeTa and AskMe archives, at least through the links at the bottom of the pages.
posted by EatenByAGrue at 10:29 PM on February 8, 2005

I get the following message when trying to access lofi.mefi :

[Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver][SQLServer]Invalid column name 'link_day'.

Browser is IE 6.0.2600.0000 (at work; *sigh*) if it makes any difference...
posted by Chunder at 1:40 AM on February 9, 2005

I can't search AskMe without a cold fusion error. I've searched for things like 'cat', 'ipod', 'shoe'. Simple terms do not compute. The google AskMe search works fine, though...
posted by naxosaxur at 7:29 AM on February 9, 2005

This is odd.
posted by Arch Stanton at 9:32 AM on February 9, 2005

I'm getting CF errors on categories, including the "Category List" link in MetaTalk menu and specific categories (eg, gatherings link in the MetaTalk sidebar).
posted by caitlinb at 12:10 PM on February 9, 2005