Intermittent 'Server Unavailable' Message - incorporating 500 & 503 Errors

[Pete in Lincs]

Here;s a new one. Around an hour ago, I was scrolling down through view new content, which is my usual catch up method.

Got to around the six hour point, and was told there is no more new content to display!

[Adam Poultney]

503 again

[Greg B]

Getting it myself but unfortunately, its a bit of a devil to track down!

[PLC1966]

503 twice in last half hour.

[boston1832]

Does anyone know if anyone actually looking at this problem? 

[Mick4350]

I'm still getting several 503 errors both on the desktop and android phone a few times a day. I was thinking of adding funds to the BM website, but won't do so until its fixed.

[Hummel]

On 05/11/2020 at 23:32, CedB said:

Mods I've been getting this message intermittently for the last week:

 

Service Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Additionally, a 503 Service Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

 

If I click refresh I get the page I wanted so just reporting an irritant  

Got the same thing last night. Made me double post a thread in Armoured vehicles.

[CedB]

I'm still getting these too, now accompanied by some weird problems with 'Content I follow' not showing all entries and, even more worrying, some threads not appearing in 'Content I Started' without me editing the first thread again.

 

@Mike it looks like things are slowly deteriorating… what do the hosting people have to say? Surely they know what they've done to your servers and services?

Maybe they've snuck another user onto your boxes?

 

Paranoid? Me?

[Adam Poultney]

been getting a lot of 503s lately all of a sudden

[Mike]

4 hours ago, CedB said:

I'm still getting these too, now accompanied by some weird problems with 'Content I follow' not showing all entries and, even more worrying, some threads not appearing in 'Content I Started' without me editing the first thread again.

 

@Mike it looks like things are slowly deteriorating… what do the hosting people have to say? Surely they know what they've done to your servers and services?

Maybe they've snuck another user onto your boxes?

 

Paranoid? Me?

 

That's weird, as I've been getting a lot less lately, kind of one a day if that.  I put this on the back burner for a while, partly because we were getting nowhere, with each party referring to the other, and me in the middle, but also because there was a new update coming.  I feel that the errors have been lessened by that, but it doesn't seem to be the case across the board.  I've got 512mb internet, and seem to suffer less.  Does anyone else have good internet but lots of instances of 503 errors now?  Also, is anyone still getting 500 errors?  I've not had one of those in a looooong time

[Mike]

19 minutes ago, Adam Poultney said:

been getting a lot of 503s lately all of a sudden

I had a day where I got a couple in one session, but my experience has been the reverse.  See my reply to Ced for some postulations

[PDH]

No 500 errors but a lot more 503's in the past three weeks. I'm on FTTP with a 70Mb/s download speed and a 20 Mb/s upload. Have been getting 2 or 3 per login session sometimes.

 

Hope this is of use!

 

P

[CedB]

Just had two 503s in quick succession, the first on 'Content I follow' and the other on "Show all notifications'  

 

I'm not sure the server knows how fast our internet connections are Mike but mine, like PDH's, is 70MB download.

As the message is coming from the server I think the problem's there rather than the internet?

Pity we can't see which server but I guess it's the web server?

[Cerberus]

I'm getting 503's and then a black banner/sign at the top of the screen saying "Your account does not need activation" ??

 

Anyone else had this?

[Adam Poultney]

had a few more 503s. The 500 seems to be gone for good 

Edited March 6, 2021 by Adam Poultney

[Adam Poultney]

And another straight after

[boston1832]

22 hours ago, CedB said:

Just had two 503s in quick succession, the first on 'Content I follow' and the other on "Show all notifications'  

 

I'm not sure the server knows how fast our internet connections are Mike but mine, like PDH's, is 70MB download.

As the message is coming from the server I think the problem's there rather than the internet?

Pity we can't see which server but I guess it's the web server?

A 500 is an Internal Server Error - the web server can't process the request you're making as something has gone wrong in the code that serves up the data you requested.

A 503 is Service Unavailable - the server can't process  the request at all for some reason, often that it's temporarily down or it's overloaded. 

 

Neither of these would be caused by the user having a slower connection. It's seems most likely to be a problem with the hosting service not providing the right resources, e.g. the server is running short of memory or processor capacity, or they're not balancing requests properly between the customers and some are being serviced at the expense of others. 

 

Incidentally the most common error message I get seems to suggest there's a 500 followed by the server sending a 503 when it's unable to process the first error gracefully. 

 

Both should have a fairly obvious cause to any provider worth their salt as they will be logged at the server level as a severe error. If they're saying they don't know what it is, the likelihood is they've not looked for it properly.

Edited March 7, 2021 by boston1832

[Black Knight]

I had a period where I wasn't getting any 503s but over the last 7 to 10 days I've been getting them more and more. Its reached the point that I'm getting one about 5 every times I change pages

[Adam Poultney]

Another one again. Huge increase today and yesterday

[Adam Poultney]

Just had another one going into an RFI thread

[Team Aer Lingus]

I don't normally comment and just press F5 & normally it  does the trick,  but today there has been a huge increase in 503's sadly 

Edited March 8, 2021 by Team Aer Lingus
bad grammar

[Adam Poultney]

and again twice in a couple of minutes

[treker_ed]

Not that I've noticed, but on my main PC which uses an ethernet connection (500mb FTTP) I don't seem to get any of the 500 or 503 errors. However..... when looking at BM via my smartphone on a WI-FI connection I get them on a regular basis, almost 2 or 3 per session that I'm spending looking at the site.

 

It seems that I only get the errors when using a mobile device rather than a PC or laptop (i also have access to a laptop which I use to browse BM and don't have the 500 or 503 errors or if i have had them, they have been so few and far between that I don't recall seeing them).

 

@Mike Hope this info helps any!

 

 

[CedB]

Another 503 from my desktop just now on 'Content I follow'  

[Railfan87]

On 3/5/2021 at 9:36 AM, Mike said:

 

I put this on the back burner for a while, partly because we were getting nowhere, with each party referring to the other...

 

I've got 512mb internet, and seem to suffer less.  Does anyone else have good internet but lots of instances of 503 errors now?  Also, is anyone still getting 500 errors?  I've not had one of those in a looooong time

There's no excuse for finger pointing by your vendor(s).  All the 5xx errors are thrown by a server, specifically the web server that is processing the http request.  In this case, and without knowing anything about the architecture, I'll go out on a short limb and state that it is a relatively simple matter to search the error log(s) to begin root cause analysis.  It is almost certainly an indication that the server is overloaded.  Again, without knowing the architecture, it sounds as if the virtual web server for BM.com is under-resourced.

 

User bandwidth is a red herring.  There errors indicate that there is an issue within the server itself.  It's going to happen whether you have a dedicated T3 connection or a 300 baud modem.  Yes, I'm that old.

 

Chris

Retired unix guru