502 error increasingly frequent

"502 www.permies.com: is currently very busy and can't respond to all requests or is undergoing maintenance. Please try again later. Thank you."

I've been posting to permies almost every day since April, attaching 3 bigass pictures with nearly every post, and I've gotten pretty used to seeing this 502 error when I try to post during relatively busy times, (in my experience, around 8-9pm.) Usually after a few times of trying it eventually works. However, this error seems to be popping up with increasing frequency lately, even when I try to post during what I perceive as off-peak times.

Paul recommended that I post to the tinkering forum to see if anything could be done to troubleshoot.

I use my samsung galaxy siii to post, using mobile data, and currently I have 4g with all 5 bars of signal, (plenty fast,) so I'm pretty sure it's not just slow interwebs on my end. Sometimes I can get around it by posting one picture, then editing and adding another, then editing and adding the third. Doing it this way seems to take at least half an hour whereas in the past my daily post might have taken 10 minutes to go through.

Did I break something by posting too much? Is permies just really really very busy lately? Can anything be done or do I just have to deal with the inconvenience of the post edit edit dance? Thanks!

Sounds like the load is overwhelming the site, but there might be something you could try on your end.

I am not sure, but maybe you are uploading the full resolution of the image from your phone, which might be a bit overkill. A photo larger that 1920x1080 pixels is larger than nearly every screen available to most people.

To change the file size via quality, you can normally compress a JPG pretty to significantly reduce the file size, but not change it visually to most people. In Photoshop, a quality of "6" or "high" has been the web design ideal for years.

There are apps you could search for and install to shrink the photo size and quality. If you are out of space on your phone, instead of installing an app, I think you can email the photo to yourself, and when you attach the photo to an email, it gives you option to reduce the size of the image.

The simplest solution may be to try your uploads during non-peak time if at all possible.

Hope that helps & I really enjoy your posts!

evan l pierce wrote: attaching 3 bigass pictures with nearly every post,

I never get the 502 error.

I think that the bigass pictures are the problem. For what it's worth, I don't read "Evan's Ants Village Log", because I don't have the patience to wait for the bigass photos to load. I really dislike the feeling that my web browser has crashed whenever I open that thread.

On my servers, I do not allow anyone to store a 3 MB photo to my web site. I either resize large photos on the fly as they are uploaded, or I outright ban uploads of more than some reasonable size for web use. 100KB seems sufficient to me. I can't trust end users to understand the intricacies of maintaining a snappy web site, so I have to enforce good design via software. [...edited by joseph to delete some technobabble...]

Every digital camera that I have ever used had an option to set the resolution and the quality of the photos being taken. I typically size photos for the web at 640X480, and medium quality. There is an add-in for the Nautilus file browser in Linux which allows for resizing of multiple images at once from the file browser.

Evan,

I checked around with some of the coderanch developers and then checked with our awesome host. Our awesome host has tinkered with some settings and is now saying "try it again!"

Just to add a bit of clarity about bigass pictures ....

1) The forum developers have put a LOT of time into making things easier for people to attach pictures to their posts. Including the ability to post pics from their phones. So, rather than encouraging people to add steps to get images here, I would rather come up with solutions so it remains very easy for people to add pictures.

2) When somebody uploads a bigass picture, like to evan's thread, a large "thumbnail" is created. 700 pixels wide. So people can see the images without having to download the much larger image. I think most people looking at these image heavy threads have a great internet connection and they LOVE the pics. So rather than trying to change the way we do things to accommodate people with low bandwidth and prefer smaller images - I wish to find ways to optimize the way things are done now. I know that I, for one, really enjoy viewing the pictures at the current resolution.

paul wheaton wrote:2) When somebody uploads a bigass picture, like to evan's thread, a large "thumbnail" is created. 700 pixels wide.

Thanks. That helps. Some of those "thumbnails" are still 300KB in size. For example: https://permies.com/t/45960/a/34146/thumb-20151121_143159.jpg

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:2) When somebody uploads a bigass picture, like to evan's thread, a large "thumbnail" is created. 700 pixels wide.

Thanks. That helps. Some of those "thumbnails" are still 300KB in size. For example: https://permies.com/t/45960/a/34146/thumb-20151121_143159.jpg

Yup.

Most are around 150k, which is much smaller than the 10meg original.

------

The key is that I want to make it easier for folks to upload.

Paul: I appreciate the site, and the work you do to keep it working well. Thanks.

Thanks for the troubleshooting, y'all!

I figure I'll try to keep track of my posting times for the next few days at least in an attempt to give y'all some data on what is otherwise a sort of intermittent problem.

Today I hit submit on my post (with 3 bigass pictures attached,) at 6:02pm and it was online at 6:24pm. That felt like about how long it usually takes when it's successful on the first try.

I hit submit at 10:44pm and at 11:04pm instead of my post going online I got logged out of permies. This has happened before, but it's rare compared to the 502 error. Upon logging back in I received this message:

"The software thinks there was a CSRF error. The fact that you are seeing this means there was not in fact such an attack. There are three main reasons you might see this page:
You've had this browser open a long time and tried to update something without loading another page in the interim. For example, you were on the form to create a new post, went for lunch, had your session expire and came back. To resolve this, go back and reload the page. This will give you a new token and you'll be all set. If you find this happening to you a lot, post exactly what you were doing in the forums and we will see if we can do anything to help you out.
If you were just trying to view a page and not update something, we have a bug at our end. For example, maybe you clicked the search link and saw this screen. If you think there is a bug, post the date/time/timezone and what you were doing in the forums.
You have JavaScript turned off in your browser
If any of these apply to you, try to post to let us know about it. If the error prevents you from posting, email what you were trying to do and which of the three categories you think the error falls into to bookpromotion at javaranch dot com and moosesaloon at javaranch dot com"

At 11:08pm I hit submit again, and at 11:28pm I received the 502 error. Bummer. I'll try again tomorrow.

Evan,

15 minutes to attach three pictures is nuts.

I just went and grabbed the last three images in your thread. the smalles was 2 megs and the biggest was 4 megs. It took me about one second to download each of them. And I know that my verizon upload speed is faster than my dsl download speed. Therefore, your total upload time for the three images should be something like three to ten seconds. Tops!

When you are at basecamp, you should be able to use the wifi here. Does that change anything?

What happens if you try to upload these images via a PC?

When you upload images, are you using the mobile view?

I am using the mobile view, and next time I'm at basecamp maybe I'll remember to try the wifi, but last time I tried it, (months ago,) it was slower and less reliable than my mobile data. Haven't tried to upload from a pc, but that would be kind of a hassle with my current setup.

This morning I posted thrice in a row from up at the lab where I have just 3g and 2 bars of signal. It went relatively fast.

Submitted at 10:26am, online at 10:32.

Submitted at 10:55, online but missing the third pic at 10:58. Submitted edit w/ third pic reattached at 10:59, online at 11:01.

Submitted at 11:17, online at 11:21.

Tonight I posted again and it was a bit slower, (rush hour maybe?) Submitted at 9:49pm, online at 9:59.

I get this occasionally, including today, and I searched the tinkering forum for a thread related to it, and found this.  I'm not sure why this happens, but I am not using a mobile device (i'm on a laptop with highspeed) or posting pics.  I can access some of the site, but I couldn't post a reply... and then suddenly I tried and I could.   No clue as to why it didn't work and why it works now, but thought it was worth noting/reporting

For each time it happens, post a note here with a time and date.  

I don't have the times.  but I Will do that in the future.  Thanks Paul.

Just happened to me, about 5 minutes ago. And happened yesterday as well.

I got a 503 error just now while opening a recent thread

I got this "503 www.permies.com: is currently very busy and can't respond to all requests or is undergoing maintenance. Please try again later. Thank you. " just a few minutes ago repeatedly when trying to open the 'where's the scythe forum' thread....then just as suddenly permies was back

Yep, me, too.

Found this in my inbox from a user, they were kind enough to forward the details of the error message along:

An error has occurred.
Contact us at forums AT permies DOT com with what you were doing
when the error occurred along with the date and time (Dec 24, 2016 3:30:59 PM).

Destiny Hagest wrote:Found this in my inbox from a user, they were kind enough to forward the details of the error message along:

An error has occurred.
Contact us at forums AT permies DOT com with what you were doing
when the error occurred along with the date and time (Dec 24, 2016 3:30:59 PM).

I tried looking that up in our logs, but that information is not in our logs because it is a little too old.  

Ugh, sorry, effing holidays. Okay, disregard then. I'll keep this thread in mind if I get any more.