Server Error Question
This WebDNA talk-list message is from 2004
It keeps the original formatting.
numero = 60091
interpreted = N
texte = We received this error (OSX 10.3, Webstar 5, WebDNA 6, MySQL 4) "Sorry, WebCatalog server not running" (maybe WebDNA server not running, I can't remember back that far) This happened on our county election server, VoteWashington.Org, on election night as counties began to post their election returns. It coincides with usually a spike in traffic, but this particular server does not get that much traffic - the same configurations ran the state server for several years and take hundreds of thousands of hits on election night. Restarting the server did NOT cause it to go away. The server was serving text pages still, but not WebDNA. We had to shut it down cold and then start it again. It has run since then (2 weeks) without so much as a hiccup - even through the rest of the election night with county file uploads and form postings and increasing traffic. Suspect: After posting a county's data from a ballot form, we load the form values for the complete ballot as a series of name/value pairs into a second form on redirect, then use a javascript onload function to fire that posting off to a URL on the state server at Vote.WA.Gov - the objective is to have the counties enter data only once. When we ran the state service (up until the Nov 2 election) this worked flawlessly; we simply looped through the form variables and used a replace statement to update the state's WebDNA databases (that system did not use MySQL, just our county one). WA State took over the system with their own version for the Nov election without sufficient time for testing. The state was making programming changes to their side of the process as late as election day 3:00 pm, and we had no control over their programming, and their willingness to either dialog or test properly was nil. I should have disabled the second posting simply because it violated out own procedures of not allowing programming changes after certification, but I bowed to pressure from clients. After postings from 3 counties, and then the subsequent posting to the state, the system blew up as described above. On restart, I disabled the second posting, forcing the counties to enter their state info directly on the state's system. As stated, we had no a single error recorded of ANY kind, let along any server crash issues. I suspect in some of their error checking routines they may have introduced some sort of mal-formed URL trying to send a county back to VoteWashington from the state site; they were fooling around with some extraordinarily large URL's that appeared in testing as errors, but refused to discuss anything with us. I am trying to research what could have happened to avoid this in the next election; and of course, the WA state IT folks are trying to blame it on us as the second coming of the anti-Christ (business as usual since we do not use Microsoft), but will not actually engage us in constructive dialog to analyze the programming. To make a long story short, what causes the error message? Memory issues, latent unclosed connections? Any ideas? Thanks Larry Larry Hewitt 360.807.1100 OFFICE HCO, LLC 360.807.1103 FAX 109 No. Tower 360.880.4855 CELL P.O. Box 1017 larryh@hewittco.com Centralia, WA 98531 www.votewashington.org www.hewittco.com ------------------------------------------------------------- This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list
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We received this error (OSX 10.3, Webstar 5, WebDNA 6, MySQL 4) "Sorry, WebCatalog server not running" (maybe WebDNA server not running, I can't remember back that far) This happened on our county election server, VoteWashington.Org, on election night as counties began to post their election returns. It coincides with usually a spike in traffic, but this particular server does not get that much traffic - the same configurations ran the state server for several years and take hundreds of thousands of hits on election night. Restarting the server did NOT cause it to go away. The server was serving text pages still, but not WebDNA. We had to shut it down cold and then start it again. It has run since then (2 weeks) without so much as a hiccup - even through the rest of the election night with county file uploads and form postings and increasing traffic. Suspect: After posting a county's data from a ballot form, we load the form values for the complete ballot as a series of name/value pairs into a second form on redirect, then use a javascript onload function to fire that posting off to a URL on the state server at Vote.WA.Gov - the objective is to have the counties enter data only once. When we ran the state service (up until the Nov 2 election) this worked flawlessly; we simply looped through the form variables and used a replace statement to update the state's WebDNA databases (that system did not use MySQL, just our county one). WA State took over the system with their own version for the Nov election without sufficient time for testing. The state was making programming changes to their side of the process as late as election day 3:00 pm, and we had no control over their programming, and their willingness to either dialog or test properly was nil. I should have disabled the second posting simply because it violated out own procedures of not allowing programming changes after certification, but I bowed to pressure from clients. After postings from 3 counties, and then the subsequent posting to the state, the system blew up as described above. On restart, I disabled the second posting, forcing the counties to enter their state info directly on the state's system. As stated, we had no a single error recorded of ANY kind, let along any server crash issues. I suspect in some of their error checking routines they may have introduced some sort of mal-formed URL trying to send a county back to VoteWashington from the state site; they were fooling around with some extraordinarily large URL's that appeared in testing as errors, but refused to discuss anything with us. I am trying to research what could have happened to avoid this in the next election; and of course, the WA state IT folks are trying to blame it on us as the second coming of the anti-Christ (business as usual since we do not use Microsoft), but will not actually engage us in constructive dialog to analyze the programming. To make a long story short, what causes the error message? Memory issues, latent unclosed connections? Any ideas? Thanks Larry Larry Hewitt 360.807.1100 OFFICE HCO, LLC 360.807.1103 FAX 109 No. Tower 360.880.4855 CELL P.O. Box 1017 larryh@hewittco.com Centralia, WA 98531 www.votewashington.org www.hewittco.com ------------------------------------------------------------- This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list . To unsubscribe, E-mail to: To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to Web Archive of this list is at: http://webdna.smithmicro.com/
Larry Hewitt
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