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

Mina said I should post direct to you instead: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F47998?thread=266187

I'm risking jinxing it by posting but h2g2 seems to have been running much faster all this afternoon. If that was you then well done!

There was only one slight mishap earlier when it managed to crash IE somehow but, being an M$ product, that isn't exactly hard to do.

Gosh - I see what you mean. Well, it certainly wasn't anything directly to do with me. However, for a while we've been asking for Internet Services to put in monitoring on the web servers to see how loaded they are. It's possible they found something anomalous in the monitoring and have fixed it. I'll ask.

I'm not sure where this should go so here seems as good/bad as anywhere. There are a number of anomalies in the various site skins, some of which would seem to be by accident rather than design. I've been using my PS as a test page.

dev
- blue version of blob on pale page
- /h2g2/skins/dev/images/Smilies/f_winkeye.gif instead of Alabaster (though this may be deliberate)

place-nireland
- BBCi in tester badge not showing (code excised between BR statements)

collective
- white version of blob on fairly dark grey-green page
- some TABLEs not supported: BBCi tester OK but page format wrong (lost <TD ROWSPAN="4"&gt and no icons or pig

ptop
- I assume the off-site links are deliberately broken

cult
- white version of blob on dark page

ww2
- blue version of blob on white page
- /h2g2/skins/dev/images/Smilies/f_winkeye.gif (rather than own or Alabaster)
- non-centred text on BBCi tester (ALIGN="CENTER" is still there in view source but is not displayed that way)

Jim, do you get any sort of automatic alarm if a server is acting up? Last night and this morning, I (and others) have been having intermittant page failures of the sort which might indicate one of them needs "kicking" again.

The people who maintain the servers have monitoring in place which sets off pagers when one of the servers starts misbehaving.

Jim, have you changed anything recently? I can't edit pages. I can look at them and start to edit them but when I click to update the page I get the "Cannot find server or DNS Error" message. It suggests that I may need to change my security settings but experience says this is seldom the case. Besides which I haven't changed any of _my_ settings since last night when I did manage to update a page here.

Is the error message (referring to dns) being generated by:

a) your browser;
b) your local proxy;
c) the bbc pass through proxies?

d) a parallel universe where the orchid skin exists...

spelugx

Cannot find server or DNS error usually means a problem at your end, possibly with your ISP. Sometimes it means a problem somewhere on the route between you and the BBC (unusual, since we have multiple peering arrangements). Or possibly, the sudden failure of the proxy server you are using to access BBCi. Beyond that, it definitely can't be caused by specific problems with the DNA servers themselves, most or all of which generate their own specific error pages, unlike the 'Cannot find server' page which is generated by your browser. If it happens a lot, then suspect your ISP first, then a major routing problem on the internet second. At least with the first, there's an outside chance you can get it fixed by hassling them.

Or asking them nicely to kick BT for you There actually are some ISPs with clued tech support

spelugx

The page does indeed seem to be a browser one but the invisible page source behind it is BBC trademarked with the named email of the programmer. I have not only tried different browser windows (though I know for other reasons that I don't always get the same server from the same window) but I've also had different ISP sessions and multiple power-ups of the computer. It has been completely consistent about repeatedly not letting me Edit a page on h2g2 but not having any problem on other dna sites. Similarly posting was almost totally prevented on h2g2 (until I got a pair to work just before I had to leave) but no problem on other sites.

...and the somewhat obvious "good" news is that I do now seem able to post again but still not to edit my pages here.

Could you post the text of the underlying BBC page you get (the one masked by the Server not found page)? No idea if it'll help at all, but it can't hurt.

That's what I tried to do fairly solidly for 2 hours earlier! I saved some and posted it to Spelugx. If this doesn't work I'll have the thread version too.

It won't let me.

It seems it will let me post one-liners though.

BBC - h2g2 - Edit Guide Entry

<!--//
// Script Coded by Fraser Pearce, Client Side Development Team, BBC New Media.
// Version 1.3f [h2g2] 9/4/2002
// Contact [email protected]

// Browser Check Script:
// browserType 0 = IE3 Mac, v2 browsers and anything too unknown.
// 1 = All other v3 browsers and NS4
// 2 = IE4 Win, IE4+ Mac, Opera 5+ and NS6+/Mozilla
// 3 = IE5+ Win