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Bug 354805

Summary: help.eclipse.org and authentication to forums are down
Product: Community Reporter: Mikhail Kalkov <mikhail.kalkov>
Component: ServersAssignee: Eclipse Webmaster <webmaster>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: major    
Priority: P3 CC: thomas
Version: unspecifiedFlags: denis.roy: iplog-
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Windows Vista   
Whiteboard:
Attachments:
Description Flags
Error message in the navigation frame none

Description Mikhail Kalkov CLA 2011-08-16 05:50:56 EDT
Build Identifier: Firefox 3.6.18

I've experienced intermittent problems accessing help.eclipse.org since the end of June, and today it is down again (HTTP Error 500, java.lang.OutOfMemoryError). Furthermore, logging into Eclipse forums isn't possible either, and the page at https://dev.eclipse.org/site_login/index.php says "Unable to connect to the database server at this time(foundation_ro)."

I think that it is a disgrace to have a help website and a forum, which don't function when you need it most. If Eclipse Foundation cannot afford this website, it should be taken down, otherwise it should be fixed.



Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Try accessing http://help.eclipse.org/indigo/index.jsp
2. Navigate to https://dev.eclipse.org/site_login/?takemeback=http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php?t=login
3. Try logging into Eclipse forums
Comment 1 Mikhail Kalkov CLA 2011-08-16 05:54:10 EDT
Created attachment 201554 [details]
Error message in the navigation frame

Here is a typical error message. I've copied this from the navigation frame of the page at http://help.eclipse.org/indigo/index.jsp?topic=%2Forg.eclipse.platform.doc.isv%2Freference%2Fapi%2Forg%2Feclipse%2Fdebug%2Fcore%2FILaunchConfigurationType.html
Comment 2 Mikhail Kalkov CLA 2011-08-16 05:56:20 EDT
I think that the following two recently reported bugs might be related:

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=353872 (Forum login page displays blank, 2011-08-04)
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=354746 (Website contains potential XSS vulnerabilities, possible third party code, 2011-08-15)
Comment 3 Denis Roy CLA 2011-08-16 10:03:16 EDT
> I've experienced intermittent problems accessing help.eclipse.org since the end
> of June, and today it is down again (HTTP Error 500,
> java.lang.OutOfMemoryError)

Yes, unfortunately the Indigo help center seems to have a memory leak.  We're tracking that issue with the UA team in bug 354297



> Furthermore, logging into Eclipse forums isn't
> possible either, and the page at https://dev.eclipse.org/site_login/index.php
> says "Unable to connect to the database server at this time(foundation_ro)."

That is interesting; it's the first time that database server has gone down in about 5 years.  We've brought it back.


> I think that it is a disgrace to have a help website and a forum, which don't
> function when you need it most. If Eclipse Foundation cannot afford this
> website, it should be taken down, otherwise it should be fixed.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to be so abrasive.  Perhaps you could channel your negative energy into something more positive, like perhaps investigating the memory leak in bug 354297 and help us figure it out?
Comment 4 Denis Roy CLA 2011-08-16 10:06:07 EDT
FWIW, I've opened bug 354830 since I'd like to investigate why the site login needs a connection to that particular database.  It shouldn't.
Comment 5 Denis Roy CLA 2011-08-16 10:14:55 EDT
*** Bug 354810 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 6 Mikhail Kalkov CLA 2011-08-16 15:01:20 EDT
Sorry if I sounded too harsh, but that was caused by a feeling that the problems persisted while nobody cared. For example, I've spent 15 minutes scouring bugzilla for existing reports and found nothing since I had expected it to be under community component rather than under eclipse platform...

Anyway, thank you very much for such a quick reply and a link to the relevant bug! I'll see if I can help to nail it down. By the way, I've observed OOME with help centers of other Eclipse releases, and very often couple of them were down, while the third one would respond, so it sometimes helped to switch releases or try luck with publib.boulder.ibm.com as I did today.
Comment 7 Eclipse Webmaster CLA 2011-08-16 15:13:30 EDT
I've restarted the help instance.

-M.
Comment 8 Denis Roy CLA 2011-08-16 15:27:37 EDT
> Sorry if I sounded too harsh, but that was caused by a feeling that the
> problems persisted while nobody cared. 

I guess help.eclipse.org goes down so often that nobody reports it anymore.  In this case, you were the first one.  FWIW, Community > servers is the best place to report it.

Also, at the time you submitted this report, we were just waking up.