Technical issues, August 17

UPDATE: See message 25 ( https://www.librarything.com/topic/229174#5693400 )

This is a catch-all discussion for the technical issues we're having today, August 17.

At present, the problems are:

1. Add books is broken
2. Imports are broken
3. Uploading images is broken
4. If you're unlucky, you get a blank page. (Hit reload.)
5. The app is affected for some users.

The cause of the problems is a serious hardware failure on a critical front-end web server. We have front-end redundancy overall, but this one server has a number of special assignments to itself which are proving time-consuming to migrate.

We expect to have new systems "spun up" and working within the next few hours.

Thanks for the update

Thanks as well for the update--I thought I broke something!! :-D

GAH! I can't breath! I just...I don't know...I mean what...

Update:

Some images are also broken. (Ones that are routed to a certain server.)

Thank you, Tim, for letting us know.

I especially like the little banner at the top and the link to this thread. Nice touch.

Thanks, it was making me crazy!

Oooops. I have been adding books, and that SEEMS to be working. I hope it IS working but guess I had better cease for now and also check as to whether my additions have "stuck".

I did see that covers were not uploading.

Thanks for the warning!

Thank you for the warning, which alerted me over on Facebook. Much appreciated.

Is this why I've had 500 errors all day? For some reason I can only get LT to come up on my iPad. Otherwise I can access the blog but not the whole site.

>8 ErstwhileEditor:

I would be amazed if the books you added disappeared. Tim said the problem was the front end servers - if you added a book successfully it will have hit the back-end database and should be OK.

However I am sure Tim (and the rest of the people working on the problem) would appreciate people deciding to wait until everything is back up properly.

Thanks, I wondered what the heck was happening!!! Imports have been broken for days.

Thanks so much for having the banner up, pointing to this site. I would have wondered why it didn't function.
*crossing my fingers* that it will be solved soon!

On mine a few stuck, but most didn't. Can't wait for this to be fixed!

Thanks for posting this. I can't get LT up on my laptop at all -- I've refreshed several times and tried loading specific pages (from my history) to sneak in, but no joy. I can only get LT on my phone.

Thank you for the message. I was convinced that my sterling talents with modern technology were manifesting themselves once again. Best wishes. Tom

Is Search also broken? Doesn't work for me.

Thanks, I wondered what the heck was happening!!! Imports have been broken for days.

No, this is a new problem. If you have an import problem, post about it or email info@librarything.com.

Confirmed: Site search is also broken.

We are working on a general solution, nearing completion.

Yeah! And I'd like to say thanks for the banner! Without it I would've been hitting refresh and swearing at my computer for hours.

Thank you LT for keeping this user in the loop. Back to my book!

I have been going nuts not being able to access the site! Lol. Glad it's being worked on.

Just made it through for the first time today. Hopefully that means things are getting fixed.

So, if you need a good sys admin, I'm in the market...

Okay, we have set up new servers and they're functioning. In order for everything to work for you, however, your computer needs to know to use them--an automatic process called "DNS propagation." Ideally, this takes minutes--everyone should already have it. In reality, there's caching up and down the line.

To see if you're getting the new servers, look at the bottom of this, or any, page.



Look for the words "You are using the new servers!"

If you don't get it, wait. You might also try quitting your browser and reopening. If you don't get it in an hour or so, let us know.

If you are getting "You are using the new servers!" and you still have problems, give us details.

We are aware of only one remaining problem at present--app cover uploads.

I'm sorry for your system troubles. I've overseen a few such myself in the distant past and still shudder.

The alert message and the new-server status message are excellent. Thank you. You guys are great.

I still have a problem, so here are the details :-)

I have "You are using the new servers! " but I get a 404 Sorry, but the page you requested can't be found on

http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/User:Bnielsen/TimQuotes

I'm pretty sure that's the url I normally use and this one was linked to from my profile and also doesn't work:

http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/User:bnielsen

>27 bnielsen:

Got it. We're looking.

Confirmed: Wiki is not directing to the right place.

I also could not use the Search feature this morning.

gateway timeout error

Site search works again for me! Yippee!!!! Thanks!

>30 jenniebooks:

What?

Wiki seems to be back. Thanks!

I get a 6,201 books processed and a 'hurry up and wait' spiraling thingie. No joy.

>34 SomeGuyInVirginia:

Exporting?

Yes, an Excel export of all volumes at this link-

https://www.librarything.com/export.php?export_type=xls

This curious behavior seems to affect all non-English LT versions at this point ?

This afternoon, all of a sudden I could not reach the homepage (that is, in any language). Normally I use FF48 and curiously enough, only the chocolate navigation bar showed up there with an otherwise blank page, with no error notification whatsoever. I went to Google Chrome (v.51) and there I got "HTTP ERROR 500", showing nothing else. Next I went to Opera (v.39) where I am getting "the page on librarything does not work - librarything can not process this request", again showing nothing else.

About half an hour ago the .com domain started working normally again, but the problem seems to persist in the Dutch version I am using, and equally in other languages, in all three browsers. Substituting the .com with any other extension, like .fr or .de yields the same results as mentioned above. So I am guessing the problem affects all non-English language versions at this point in time ?

It clearly states at the bottom of this page "You are using the new servers!", but having looked in the other browsers + other LT language versions, I am getting different error messages, like

"Your connection is not secure - The owner of www.librarything.nl has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website."

in FF

and

NET: ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID

in Chrome

and

Invalid / Insecure Certificate messages

in Opera

Refreshing the page does not help matters.

>37 Luchtpint:

I believe the problem is that you're trying to use SSL (https://) on the non-English domains. That's not currently supported. Kill the "s" in the https:// and try again?

Tried that and it doesn't make any difference.

https:// was showing on all versions before, and I have never run into this specific problem until today.

As of right now, I'm unable to import books without ISBNs.
Never mind, now they showed up.

To elaborate on >40 PhaedraB:, I added a dozen books to my other account and told the import to put them all into my "deaccessioned" collection, not Your Library. All the books with ISBNs transferred fine. I tried again with the non-ISBN books but indicating the collection as Your library. That succeeded.

Basically, if it doesn't have an ISBN, it won't go into any collection except Your library.

I'm seeing a few anomalous things as well. If I select the tag ULTB, it normally shows me all the books I have tagged with it. Currently it's only showing three. The database believes me, just the tags are wrong.

http://www.librarything.com/profile/Lyndatrue/stats/vousetnulautre#

There should be six, total, not three.

Please note that I have rare dressmaking patterns in that list, and none of those are tagged as ULTBs.

ETA: Crap. It depends on where I look from, as to what I see. Either that, or accessing them made them show up, somehow. I loathe inconsistent errors.

Another error report. This time on import of patrons into TinyCat:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/220875#5694176

Add books not working in Italian http://www.librarything.com/topic/229310#

Could someone with some Italian write an answer, please?

>44 MarthaJeanne:

Done.

Update: Unchanged Excel export error. Count reaches 6102 and spiraling thingie goes into infinite loop.

I'm still getting 500s when trying to upload an image, both via upload and URL.

ETA - It works now.

>44 MarthaJeanne: Testing this on all non-English sites. Adding Books on /addbooks and entire /import page seems to be getting the same 500 error.

Add Books broken for: .it, .de (http://www.librarything.com/topic/229171), .fr, .es, and .nl sites.

Import page bug report: http://www.librarything.com/topic/229304.

OK, in testing non-English site stuff, I think we just need to change the DNS and we'll be good. Will update this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/229322 when it's set. Thanks!

Guess @lorannen isn't allowed to take a vacation any more if a server crashes when she leaves. LOL /End stupid joke

See >46 SomeGuyInVirginia:. Just tried to export to Excel and got what SGiV got:
Update: Unchanged Excel export error. Count reaches 6102 (only mine's 4,452) and spiraling thingie goes into infinite loop.

However, when I do a tab-delimited text export, it works fine. It just takes a couple of extra steps to use.

>50 gilroy: Right? ;) I'm just going to count it as a coincidence and not the system imploding without her. Fingers crossed.

Export to excel not working - processes all & hangs with spiraling symbol. Can't do text delimited either. Help!! Trying to create receipt for buyer coming at 11 am for 126 books. This always worked for me before!!

Again getting blank pages (some with / without error messages) in non-English LT versions. Yesterday they all worked fine without me having to do a thing to alleviate the situation. (when I first started noticing this problem) All other websites - either contained in my speeddials or not - still work without a glitch. This problem persists in all browsers.

>53 BLLC: Please see the bug report for that here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/229303. In the meantime, export to .tsv should work for you! Sorry for the trouble.

>54 Luchtpint: Okay, .de, .es, and .it sites should be fixed now. Pedro (sysadmin) is working on the others! Thanks for your patience.

ETA: I'll be updating this thread for non-English site fixes: http://www.librarything.com/topic/229322

I'm still getting the 500 error when I try to update the HTML on my TinyCat homepage.

>57 casvelyn: Yes! We still needed to fix TinyCat's homepage logo upload, and patron imports. Those should be working now (got them fixed over the weekend). Please let me know if you're still seeing any issues.

>ahef1963 Can you please tell me where on FaceBook you found LibraryThing information about tech problems? Or perhaps it was someone on your FB timeline alerting you? Thanks.

>59 VicRML: We posted about these issues on our official Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/LibraryThing-29747340038/