A plague of 500 Internal Server Errors

[greyorm]

As per the subject line. For the last few months I have been aggravated by "500 Internal Server Errors" that crop up more than half the time when I attempt to access any page on the Forge, regardless of what computer or ISP I attempt to connect to it through. The error page persists for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours before normal connectivity is restored.

Is this (somehow) being caused by something on my end?
If this is a site problem, is there any sort of remedy in place for it?

[Eric J.]

Same problem here, especially when using the search function.  I use lots of ISPs.

May the wind be always at your back,
-Eric

[Christopher Kubasik]

HI.

I've been having the same problem. (Noting this, in case it helps diagnosis.)

Christopher

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I've talked to Clinton about it, and he's checking things out with the server. Let's see how that goes.

Best, Ron

[Xeriar]

The forum may be running under FCGI due to load, which will limit process requests to 30 seconds by default, sometimes more, sometimes less.  Searching and other script-intensive tasks (I think a lot of them got gutted in SMF 1.1, but make sure you're not doing things like 'check image size each time it's displayed' or 'hide filename') can take up one of the processes assigned to PHP and the system just 'hangs'.

[Thenomain]

If the information helps, the 500 errors have been getting considerably worse for me over the past few days.

[Ron Edwards]

I think we're all running into this. I've been trying to post on and off for over 8 hours today, and this is the first time the site is letting me in long enough to do it.

Basically, there's not much I can do personally. But I am following up with Clinton and will see what can be done.

Best, Ron

[oliof]

searching using google using "site:www.indie-rpgs.com" in the search string may lessen the server load. this doesn't help find unread messages, though.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

After spending the last hour and a half on this, my best guess is that search engine spidering is overtaxing our servers. (It's approximately 40% of our load, as shown here (user and password indierpgs, please do not abuse it.) I have another server I purchased a few months ago to move us to, but I tried it first with RPGTalk, and that didn't work well, so I don't have a lot of confidence in it. I have temporarily prevented web spiders from hitting every page on the site, and we'll see if that helps. Please be patient on this one! I will do my best, but it may take a few days to research the actual problem.

[xenopulse]

Clinton,

As a data point, since you did that, I haven't had a single error and the site has been responding much faster.  It might be too early to tell, but what you did seems to have had a positive impact.

[hix]

Access to the site has improved for me, too. Only 1 denial over the last couple of days.

[Ron Edwards]

Yes, Clinton did magic stuff! I got a weeny error or two over the last week, but that's all.

Thanks Clinton!

Best, Ron

[Thunder_God]

I got a bunch yesterday and two days ago.

Also, got a lot more once I tried to do search.

[oliof]

The errors seem to have gone for normal use. I will report if searching for older, specific threads – which arguably puts more strain on the server – still has problems.

Thanks! You're doing great!

[greyorm]

Things have definitely cleared up over the last week. I think I had one 500 error, but other than that, the site has been responsive and readable. I should mention I haven't tried to do any searches in that time so I have no idea if the problem is better or not with such (though I suspect it is).

Thanks, Clinton!