Meterboard 2 - bugs and feature requests

[JonT]

I like your thinking Tako, but the automation is simply a unix crown job which runs a shell script with a single curl call to the same code that I am running manually. The only difference is that the manual code overrides a check to see when the script was last run. Plus, the script runs all of the challenges, so I don’t understand why for the automation the 100K is working and 200K is not.

I have a busy day ahead so I will leave it for now and let my brain mull over it while I do other stuff.

[Tako]

If you are using the interface that Thomas set up for generating icons, did you remember to make it as two different ones.

Or maybeit is the order, such that it gets the two snowmen but then overwrites them with a single one as those with two are also in the search for 100k. So run 100k first and then 200k. Just some thoughts to trigger your debugging

[JonT]

I'm pretty sure they are set up correctly, they were definitely working last week and are working properly in the development environment, just not in the live environment all of a sudden. I have been in a rabbit hole looking at how cron and curl work. No joy.

I have tried the nuclear option of deleting all of the results to date and resetting the challenges. Let's see what happens now. There will be no snowmen for a while until the automatic update runs - I don;t want to run the manual one at this point.

Very frustrating.

Jon

[JonT]

I am still grappling with this. My latest theory (looking at logs on the server) is that the automatic update is giving up because the response times from Concept2 are very slow at the moment. This would sort of explain why it has started to happen without me having changed anything, but this is only a hypothesis at the moment. It would also explain why running the update manually works....because I am more patient than the automation system and sit for 60 seconds waiting for the update to happen,

Now I need to figure out how to prove this is the issue and how to configure the automation to be a bit more patient.

I'll keep plugging away when I have time to spare, meanwhile snowmen may or may not appear.

Jon

[JonT]

The more I look the more convinced that this is a problem at the Concept2 end, with slow responses meaning that the automation at our end gives up. The automation is running at the moment and is giving mixed results in both the live and test environments. The results change over time without me changing anything at all, which points to a problem that is not on our server. I will keep a watching brief and see what happens. If this is going to be an ongoing problem than we will have endless issues with the challenge icons updating in an unreliable way.

Jon

[JonT]

Well, we live and learn. I am almost certain now that the issue with the Holiday Challenge was just slow response times from the Concept2 site. Updating the icons is still unpredictable across both the test and live environments, and I can now see the calls to C2 giving timeout errors every now and again. So, three days hunting down a problem that wasn't ours in the first place. I suspect this has been going on for a while and because it is erratic it just hasn't been spotted until now.

[Draggon]

So, three days hunting down a problem that wasn't ours in the first place.

You don't find that kind of diligence everywhere these days... Thanks, Jon!

[plummy]

So, three days hunting down a problem that wasn't ours in the first place.

You don't find that kind of diligence everywhere these days... Thanks, Jon!

100% agreed - your efforts to mine through to a solution are well appreciated Jon.

[JonT]

100% agreed - your efforts to mine through to a solution are well appreciated Jon.

It was a great relief to have it up and working just in time for your snowman to appear Mr P. That's what this was all about really, but you knew that already

[plummy]

100% agreed - your efforts to mine through to a solution are well appreciated Jon.

It was a great relief to have it up and working just in time for your snowman to appear Mr P. That's what this was all about really, but you knew that already

You are so right and clearly know me so well...