h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ouch! Nice detective work! So, looking to the future, could the doublepost safety only check the last post? Or would that still slow it down? Or did I misunderstand you entirely and that *is* what it was?

-Spike A.

Maybe you should write a book on that. Your description of the bug and how to detect is a good read!

Well, there was another crash just now...

I spotted something odd which may or may not be a clue: The crash appeared to happen just as I was posting a message to the Smiley Ideas list, and when it came back it had doubleposted. I definitely didn't submit the form more than once, so wherever the crash happened, once it came back it seemed to re-process the thread posts it had already done... Any help in narrowing it down?

If you're *absolutely* sure you didn't doublepost yourself, then that could be really useful information.

One thing about this problem is trying to track down if there's a particular conversation that's breaking things, and so the site only fails when it is posted to. At this time I need all the clues I can get.

Wander past F79114?thread=168773&latest=1 and you'll see that tom noticed it too...

It happened to me while posting to Questions only.

I had two windows open in IE6 so i could answer two things at once. I'm using a Telewest cable modem. Could the length of Questions Only and NoNoNo be relevant?

Thingites are using no,no,no
<./>F63252?thread=100492&latest=1</.>

I *really* hope that's not it.

I had real trouble posting to the Snug http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/F57147?thread=86772 & From Lurking, I see that OP had trouble @ Lil's

It may not be the length of the threads, but rather the popularity - they're the only threads on the site I've come across where three, four or five people regularly simpost...

I did double post my stuff nad it came up-double posted.

I thought, and here I betray my total ignorence of the subject, that a simulpost is where say three people all press post message at more or less the same time.. the server stacks the messages and delivers then one after another.

If there was something wrong with that process would that cause the servers to wig out like they've been doing of late?

I wouldn't dream of posting to a thingite thread - but I had two other windows open on other threads... (I wasn't posting to them). One was Amy Pawlawski's fan club (I think), the other was my own page.

Ulp ... You mean I broke the BBC -

The only reason I mentioned NoNoNo Clive was that I know both threads are long and posting fast so perhaps stressing the system.

It seemed to go down just as I was having a double-posting experience.
It seemed to stall as I posted, so I stopped and tried looking again (it didn't appear to have posted) and resubmitted. This then made a double post, but at no time did the forum get displayed. Checking my user page revealed that although I had been subscribed to the conversation, it told me I had 'no posting'.
I apologised for the double post, but again after posting the forum page would not load.
Shortly after that, everything went pear-shaped.
Could the way my conversations were convinced I had only subscribed, not posted, be any sort of clue?

I definitely posted once, but I tried a couple of refreshes while the site was down. They all came back with a Windows' white error page (sorry, Jim, I didn't note down which error, but I think it was "Server not found"), and I had moved on to trying to load my user page before the site came back, so I'm confident none of the reloads actually reached the servers.

ooops, forgot the link, it's not that important but saves time trying to find it F48000?thread=168898&skip=0&show=20

I had a server not found page then one with "XML error" in about 20 point type in the top right corner so I switched off IE for about 10-15 min and read email with Outlook express. When I returned I got on to the site but my page was empty of any content of mine. Within a minute or two it was back to normal.

Hmm. If you check your posts carefully, you'll see that they're not identical. In one post you refer to an 'Eminem-inspired' smiley and in the second post it's 'Emanem-inspired'. So unless you made the change and reposted, we're also adding typos to doubleposts. Which is worrying, if unlikely.

well i had gone to tea break and when i came back and tired to log on i didnt exist for 20 minutes. and then suddenly i did again.

which is no help at all

but it was a great description of bug catching jim!

thanks.

perhaps we could persuade wowbagger to draw a cartoon of bug catching in the bbc servers.......
FABT

don't know if this has got anything to do with it Jim, but around the time the servers crashed I got an email from 'the h2g2 editorial team' (scouting stuff) which appears to have been sent twice at nine second intervals

My double-post still doesn't exist as far as my converstions are concerned... F19585 ?