Disconnecting during a session

[drahacikfm]

Many times yesterday and today I seem to get disconnected during a problem session.  I have "continue on correct" selected.  When I solve a problem, the clock keeps running and I don't get a new problem.  Sometimes I can just click the "Solve Tactics" link, or the browser refresh button, and I get a new problem.  Other times, neither of those works, the page just sits there trying to load, and nothing comes.  (If I type the address of another site, such as Yahoo, it comes immediately, so it's not a problem with my internet connection).  Then I have to close the browser, open it again, and go to Chess Tempo, which comes up immediately, no problem.  But I have to login again, because I am no longer logged in.  I thought we are logged in for 2 days.  Seems the site is logging me out when these problems occur.  I must have had to login in 10 or 15 times in the past 24 hours, or click the Solve Tactics link many times also, when a new problem would not come up.  (Next problem button also doesn't bring up a new problem in these cases).

This is IE Explorer 7.0 and Windows XP.  This also happens on Vista on my notebook.

[richard]

Hi drahacik,

It is possible that the site had network connectivity issues over that period. I didn't notice a problem myself but as we are different timezones the issue was probably resolved when I was online (I've also had a couple of hacking attempts from two different IP addresses, the site stayed up but was under very high CPU load , it is possible the issue you noticed was a side effect of this but I think it is more likely the server had an intermittent networking issue during your usage).  There is currently an issue in the UI where problems occur if the browser isn't able to access the server while getting a new problem/and or marking the last problem, the UI essentially disables the "next problem" button to avoid accidental multiple clicks , however when the server doesn't respond the button stays disabled and there is now no way to get to another problem.  If you are using tabbed browsing in IE you shouldn't need to restart the browser, it should be enough to close the tab and open a new window.  I have scheduled time to be spent on fixing this (I can fix the disabling issue - the networking at the server end is in the hands of the network provider so I have less control over that), but due to other things being in flux I can't conveniently upload new code for a few more days.  If this continues to be a major problem for you I'll change priorities and disable some of the in flux code so that I can make an upload earlier.

If possible, can you please email me as soon as you notice this happening next time, if I'm near email than I can check the state of the server or at least get a timestamp from when your email arrived to allow me to look more closely at the logs.

Regards,
Richard.

[dlester]

It isn't network problems unless it happens all the time.  I experience a similar issue where I am not set to automatically continue, but when I click the button to go to the next problem it just doesn't do anything.  Sometimes I can click 'Solve Tactics' and it will continue, but other times I have to close the browser and go in completely new and start over.

I mentioned this to you once in the past and you made the assumption it was due to some code you had written to prevent network delay from inadvertently causing people to be charged a wrong answer due to them getting impatient and re-clicking on the 'Next' button.

But, something is just not right somewhere.  This bug is easily replicated.  I experience it a couple of times per session, and my sessions are not that long.

[richard]

Hi dlester,

I'm still not convinced that this is definitely not a network problem (although it is still fairly unclear).  The failure of the "next button" to work is definitely caused be the fact that it is disabled after it is first clicked and if the server does not respond it never gets re-enabled.  The mystery at the moment is why the server is not responding. It is possible that the server may be experiencing regular short term network connectivity issues, although there are also other valid theories as to why the server never responds.  Drahacik sent me some more details on his experience which I'm looking into now.  He found that if we waited a long time he eventually got an error indicating the server was not responding, as the server didn't go down during this period I'm suspicious that the server may be losing network access for these periods (or more likely losing this particular connection as Drahacik never seems to have problems logging in via a freshly started browser immediately after this occurs).  The browser may also be getting confused and dropping the connection itself.  Drahacik is running IE 7 are you running the same browser? (sorry if I've asked you this previously and forgotten). If so, it would be very useful for me if you could try installing Firefox 3 and see if the same thing happens there (I've seen the next button not respond with FF3, but only when my wireless connection stops responding [and one other time when I was able to verify that the server did in fact lose network connectivity - around the time the premium features launched]). If it only happens for you on IE7 and not Firefox 3, then that gives me more ideas on where to continue looking for the problem.  I'm still looking at the logs surrounding the times drahacik supplied me with , so that might also shed some light on the issue, although the logs so far are not very enlightening.

Regards,
Richard.

[drahacikfm]

I think the key here is that when the browser is not responding, I can open a new browser, connect to Chess Tempo, and everything is fine.  I go back to the old browser, hit the refesh button again, or the Solve Tactics again, and still nothing.  So it seems to be that something has broken that instance of the browser. It's not a question of lack of communication between my computer and Chess Tempo, because the new browser is communicating fine at the same time that the other browser is not functioning.  By the way, other web sites can be reached fine in old browser, just not Chess Tempo.

[richard]

Hi Drahacik,

I agree that this rules out long term network connectivity issues, however I'm still suspicious that what may have caused the first failure was a short term connection problem that then locked up the browser window handling chesstempo, the error you eventually received suggested that things had gone wrong while waiting for a network operation.

I haven't seen anything enlightening in the logs yet but I haven't finished looking, I'll probably start using IE myself exclusively for a few days which will hopefully help me reproduce the problem here.

Regards,
Richard.

[drahacikfm]

One other clue:  in the old browser which is not responding, if I open a new tab and type in the address chesstempo.com, that is unreachable too.  Even though in a new browser I can do the same thing and connect with no problems.  And in the old browser if I open a new tab and try yahoo.com, that works fine.

[richard]

Thanks Drahacik,

That last clue really does make it sound like something is getting badly locked up in the browser, if this is the case I wouldn't be surprised if this problem is specific to IE.  I have seen the next button stop responding (it will definitely do this at the moment if a network request is not answered) in firefox but never these lingering, whole browser issues afterwards. I'd like to be able to tell everyone to "just use Firefox" but unfortunately there are lots of valid reasons why users can't or don't want to shift browsers (incidentally Firefox now makes up about 40% of all users on CT, the others are split relatively evenly between IE6 and IE7 (with IE7 pulling away from IE6 now), safari and opera are the next two but these are a LONG way behind [opera still has issues with dragging the pieces, it kind of works but in a fairly annoying way]).

 I'll keep investigating at my end.

Regards,
Richard.

[slacker00]

I've had similar problems, but it was infrequent enough I didn't worry about it.  I also thought it was MY computer because it is kinda old, as well as my internet being a slow dialup connection which sometimes drops for no reason.  Plus I'm using IE, even though I've got Firefox installed, I'm just so used to IE, I'm slow to switch over.  I'm upgrading my RAM from 128M to 1G, as soon as it comes in the mail.  I'll try to report back if I can notice any kind of improvement from this upgrade or by using Firefox. 

[richard]

Are there any regular users out there that are using IE7 and have NEVER seen this problem? (next problem button not responding and the browser requiring a restart before chess tempo is reachable again?).

Thanks,
Richard.