504 Gateway time out is back

[Euclid]

This ongoing GATEWAY TIME OUT problem has been a regular occurrence here for at least 2 years now.  We had somebody posting here last fall who said he was working for Kalmbach to fix the problem, but that has not happened.  One thing I have noticed in my experience with the problem is this:  It never occurs on weekends, and it always occurs on Mondays, and frequently on Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. 

 

The last we were told by the moderator was that it has nothing to do with Kalmbach equipment or software, but rather, it is caused by malware on our computers. 

 

This seems to be an indication of the apparently split conclusion of what the characteristic symptoms of this ongoing technical problem actually are.  Whenever this problem occurs, the response here often refers to the problem being the occurrence of pop-up ads.  Otherwise people refer to the problem as the “504 Gateway Time-Out,” which begins a long time span (1-4 minutes) of loading, and then aborts the loading.  This failure-to-load is the only symptom that I consider to be a problem for using the forum.  So I have never understood why people are complaining about unrelated issue of pop-up ads.   

 

In any case, apparently the moderator’s response that the problem it is caused by malware; and can be fixed with anti-malware, ad blocking software that we can install on our computers; is directed to the commonly voiced complaint about pop-up ads.  

 

This leads me to wonder if Kalmbach is even aware of this “504 Gateway Time-out” problem, or maybe has ever been aware of it. 

 

Certainly, there has never been a clear explanation of what is causing the “504 Gateway Time-out."  It could be a software or hardware problem with Kalmbach equipment, our user equipment, or Microsoft. It could also be a combination of all three.   

[Overmod]

I access the forum through the main 'forums' page (because it lets me select Trains, MR, and Classic Trains with one button click).  At no time during the outage did this page fail to load.  At no time did I observe ads failing to load as forum pages tried to render.  From time to time 'the holes in the Swiss cheese would align' and I might get a forum to momentarily open, or even a thread page to open... but just as when moderators have deleted or moved a post, none of the actual thread postings or text-entry window would appear -- you got only the header and the information down at the bottom, with nothing in between.  This would only last a refresh or two before abending to the familiar white screen with 504 notice.  Evidently there were a couple of people who actually did get something to post, but in one such case their post disappeared when the site originally came back up and only reappeared hours and hours later...

I think this is part of changing the digital permissions on the 'money side' trains.com over to Firecrown, and only incidentally (albeit painfully) involves the forum content.  I am now seeing frequent very slow throughput (where it may take 30 seconds or more for letters I type to actually appear in the post window) and involuntary page refreshes (losing all the entered text!) every couple of minutes, which makes it tedious to endure.

[caldreamer]

OWTX:

 You are correct.  The admin had to completly shutdown and restarted the server that serves the trains forum.  As I displayed earlier the gateway server was down.  It could have been hardware failure, in which case I wonder why they did not have redundency in case the main server went down. It also could have been a hack, which is very easy to do, since most companies still use Microsoft operating systems and requires more knowledge on the part of the admin to fix the problem and restart the system, or any number of other causes.

[BaltACD]

I have also been getting messages that the server can't be reached, almost instantly when making a request, to be followed several seconds later with the screen I had requested.

[charlie hebdo]

This problem has been happening more than once this year. Seems likely that maintenance is not a priority now that the publications are being sold.

[Flintlock76]

Backshop

This is the first time that I have gotten all the way to the forums in about 4 days.  I believe the end is near...

 

Yes, I managed to get back in last night around 10:00 PM after hitting "walls" all week long.  And I only tried just for the hell of it, a "Just maybe..." thing. 

I just hope if they're going to shut the various Forums down (It's their right after all) they give us enough warning so we can make our goodbyes.  I've been on the various Forums for 14 years, I'd hate to just drop out of sight like so many others have.

[blue streak 1]

Dear trains.  "IF" This problem or anything else occurs again can you set up a way for us to immediately notify you that there is a problem?  Once you are aware of a problem is it possible to post on News wire what you are doing to mitigate the problem as News Wire was never down.  Of course that does make the problem much more transparrent to the world.

[OWTX]

I just figured the server admin tasked with sorting this mess out, and the only one who knew how to reset the hamster wheel, moved on.

[Backshop]

This is the first time that I have gotten all the way to the forums in about 4 days.  I believe the end is near...

[caldreamer]

What happened is that the gateway or computer that the internet uses to access the trains.com general discussion ip address was down. It could have been for any number of reasons which I will not go into. Below is the results of a trace route. As you can see ip address one which is 192.168.4.1 is the gateway address.  It is up now, but that was where the problem was.

traceroute to cs.trains.com (3.220.122.119), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  _gateway (192.168.4.1)  0.525 ms  0.650 ms  0.833 ms
 2  100.64.112.2 (100.64.112.2)  3.775 ms  3.487 ms  3.589 ms
 3  10.70.0.226 (10.70.0.226)  3.823 ms  3.795 ms  4.058 ms
 4  10.70.0.2 (10.70.0.2)  3.466 ms  4.198 ms  3.749 ms
 5  10.70.0.10 (10.70.0.10)  4.957 ms  4.561 ms  4.778 ms
 6  10.25.0.97 (10.25.0.97)  5.880 ms  4.238 ms  3.953 ms
 7  10.25.0.113 (10.25.0.113)  4.763 ms  6.143 ms  6.194 ms
 8  204.111.0.118 (204.111.0.118)  5.672 ms 99.83.90.146 (99.83.90.146)  11.102 ms 204.111.0.118 (204.111.0.118)  6.557 ms

[samfp1943]

Daytime seems to be the most  problematic time to connect with the FORUMS;In my recent experiences.    '504' Timing OUT ius really quick, allowng almost no time to reply, or even edit a response.   

Seems oinly the abulity to be able to read, without any response,  is the new oirder of business????   This new ' technology' is really, no where near as user friendly..   

[blue streak 1]

Do not believe it just got thru almost instantenously. Friday evening 23:35

[BaltACD]

Tried multiple times on 5/5 - all without success 504's and other time out issues.

Surprised to get this far just after midnight 5/6

[Paul of Covington]

   Yep, same here.  The rest of the site seems OK.  Just the forums are slow.

[blue streak 1]

Am getting it intermittenly again.  Takes about 1 minute - 80 seconds to be indicated.  This is the 3rd try to post this.