Web interface is broken

I have problems using the web interface since yesterday:

• Comment->Save: Nothing happens.
• Answer->Submit: The "something went wrong" message is shown, but the answer appears in the the thread inspite of this.
• Aks a question->submit: This failed the last 10 times I tried to create this message. This time it worked ;-)

I've send a message to files@mathworks already.

[EDITED] And to match the question->answer schema:

Are you happy that I suffer from the same problems as you?

[Sean de Wolski]

You could turn it into a question ;-)

-Is your web interface also broken?

-Is the weather nice where you are and this website being broken giving you an excellent excuse to get outside?

-Will the web being broken be fixed by the completion of my next cup of coffee?

-How am I possibly going to get you to gimme urrrgently code for facial recognition by PCA now?

-Is it 1984?

[Jan]

I've tried to post this thread repeatedly, but the Submit-button seemed to be unresponsive. But now the server found 7 versions in its buffer and published them... Sorry. I'm deleting them now. I've struggeled so much with the authors of double posts here and in CSSM. Now I've created a heptuple post by my own.

Answer 1

[Randy Souza]

Thanks for reporting these problems, apologies for all the inconvenience.

We've had two related problems with MATLAB Answers' search in the past 24 hours:

1. Between about 4PM EST on 8/22 and 8AM EST on 8/23 the search engine failed to index new content, including questions, answers, and comments. This is the likely cause of the posting errors reported in this thread.
2. Between about 11AM EST on 8/23 and now (2:15PM EST on 8/23) the search engine was returning "no results" intermittently (as shown in Sean's screen shot). I think that this is now fixed, but will keep an eye on it.

[Sean de Wolski]

I can confirm that it hasn't happened in the last 14 minutes.

[Jan]

Does this concern the Comment->Save button (no reaction) and the Questions->Submit action ('something went wrong' screen)? If so, I had a complete wrong idea of what a "search engine" is.

It would increase the convenience of the users, If server problems are mentioned early. Then we would not try to send the failing messages again and again (see Sean's "obsessive" clicks). Hysteric users (like me, I tried to create this thread 5 or 6 times) kill the last remaining resources of an overloaded server by an uDoS attack (unintented denial of service).

What about a red bold text in the upper left: "DON'T PANIC! SERVER IS POOPED"?

My network admin used to drop in and suggests: "Time for a coffe break!"

Anyhow, this comment did not cause any troubles. Thanks, Randy!

[Jan]

@Randy: I've seen this message, when I logged in a few minutes ago on the log-in-page: "Planned Outage for MathWorks Account on Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011 between 5:30pm - 10:30pm EST". But I usually do not log out over night, therefore I haven't seen this yesterday. Sorry, I accept this as coffee-break-suggestion.

[Walter Roberson]

Ah, I don't log out much either, so I just kept getting the "we are having technical difficulties, please do not adjust your set" page.

[Sean de Wolski]

I don't log out and don't know my TMW (randomly generated) password. Every time I have to do any licensing or whatever, I apply for a new password.

[Daniel Shub]

Sometimes I can find the email they sent me the last time I needed to do something, but most of the time I just get a new password.

[Jan]

@Sean: So why are you assuming, that the password is generated _randomly_? Is is accompanied by the suggestion "Please be sure to change your password"???

The default password have 8 lower-case characters and digits, such that there is a pool of 2.8e12 strings. This is too much for a brute force attack. But beside the fact, that the emails are send without encryption through the internet, I've seen too many weak random number generators to trust such a tiny string pool without special characters... ;-)

[Walter Roberson]

You can change your password from your community profile page.

Answer 2

[Sean de Wolski]

Yes. I have this issue as well, posting a comment three or four times and it looks like it hasn't posted. I saw the same with Fangjun's comments too.

Gray Haired Firefox

More

It's also occasionally showing up with "No answers found" almost like a failed search query.

pix == repmat('words',1000,1)
 ans 
      = 1

[Jan]

@Sean: "pix == repmat('words',1000,1);" ?!

[Sean de Wolski]

A MATLABY was of saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" - a fairly common expression (In New England at least) when trying to explain things.

[Sean de Wolski]

Or "A picture is equal to a thousand words", would probably be more exact from the above.

[Jan]

Now, after you've share the coding scheme, it is 100% obvvious.

The PNG looks like I need a new pair of glasses: it is scaled up using a lowpass filter, although the original dimensions would match in the mask. I'm going to add this point to the wish-list.

Answer 3

[Fangjun Jiang]

Problem confirmed!

Answer 4

[Walter Roberson]

Definite problem, but in my tests, everything got posted but didn't look like it got posted. I did not, however, try posting a new Question.

[Sean de Wolski]

I just obsessively clicked save and it doubled and triple posted comments.

[Sean de Wolski]

The comment issue appears to be fixed as it didn't happen with either of my two comments here or in other threads. I'm still getting "your search returned no results" about half the time I load the home page.

[Jan]

It seems like Sean's obsessive clicks have been the cause of the problem. ;-)

I'd expect to find messages from the staff here.