# Gamers Seeking Gamers (500: Internal Server Error)



## Deovin (Apr 30, 2011)

I've been getting a 500 (Internal Server Error) since last weekend.

Clicking on the link results in the site just spinning it's wheels for the better part of a minute before displaying the error page.


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## IronWolf (Apr 30, 2011)

Hhhhhmmmmm seems to be working for me at the moment. Have you tried from a different web browser or clearing your temporary Internet files?


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## Deovin (Apr 30, 2011)

500 is a server side error, so it's something on EN's (or their host's) end.

I've tried from about 4 different computers in multiple locations over the past week; same result.


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## IronWolf (Apr 30, 2011)

WarEagleWhoDat said:


> 500 is a server side error, so it's something on EN's (or their host's) end.
> 
> I've tried from about 4 different computers in multiple locations over the past week; same result.




Yeah - normally I would agree with that.  It has worked for me from two different machines and two different browsers - so at the very least it isn't a global issue.  

I wonder if you have any strange data in your profile? Anything odd listed under your Edit Details - Additional Information section?  Maybe the server isn't handling something gracefully from there...


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## Tharian (Apr 30, 2011)

Both the forum and the feature opened for me just now.  Both were rather quick, too.  Something that wasn't the case about a week ago.

It may be server side, yes, but could it be that the server returning the message is not the ENWorld one, but an intermediary system?


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## Morrus (Apr 30, 2011)

Working fine for me, too.  Weird.


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## Deovin (Apr 30, 2011)

Looks like I was actually able to get into it by going to my profile page, but clicking on the link at the top of the page still results in the 500. I can get to the rest of the site just fine.

Actually, I can only see the member list. Can't seem to get the map.


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## El Mahdi (Mar 5, 2012)

I know this is an older thread, but I didn't see anything in here that showed how this problem was resolved.

I've been having the same problem for a few months now. I've cleared my history and cookies, and still no help. I know it's not a problem with ENWorld, as other people are using it just fine. I've tried it with both Internet Explorer and Safari on my computer, but no go. I cannot acces it on my iPhone either (same error). If I'm logged out, I can see the introductory/sample Gamers Seeking Gamers page...where it tells you to log in or register, but if I'm logged on (either on my computer, cell phone, or using IE or Safari) I get the 500 error.

Is there an accelerator, or add-on, or somesuch that's necessary for this page to load? Or could there be something in my ENWorld profile/settings that's blocking me out...?

It's highly possible I've changed some setting on my computer that is keeping this page from loading, but I don't know what, and it's the only such page I have a problem with...but that wouldn't explain why I can't access from my cell...

Any Ideas...?


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## Deovin (Mar 5, 2012)

Almost one year later and I'm still having the issue. Multiple browsers on multiple PCs, multiple Macs, and now iPad. Tried from multiple locations in my area and in other states, on multiple networks. Still no luck.


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## Morrus (Mar 5, 2012)

WarEagleWhoDat said:


> Almost one year later and I'm still having the issue. Multiple browsers on multiple PCs, multiple Macs, and now iPad. Tried from multiple locations in my area and in other states, on multiple networks. Still no luck.




The problem here is that when trying to diagnose a bug, we have to loko for the thing in common. And you've ruled out everything in common with that sentence. So it's not browser related, computer related, time related, or location related, but it works for most people but not you. I honestly don't know how one would even go about diagnosing such a thing.

I can't see anything in common between yours and El Mahdi's account which you guys have and those who it works for don't have (or vice versa).

The only explanation my imagination can even possibly conjure which meets those criteria is a personal superpower which automatically disables the GsG system no matter how or where you access it!

Anyone else got any ideas?


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## El Mahdi (Mar 5, 2012)

For what it's worth, it used to work fine for me until a few months ago (I don't remember exactly when it stopped working).  I hadn't actively checked it for quite a while after first setting up my location and profile, as I wasn't actively looking for a game at the time.  But I tried to look a few months ago and I couldn't access it...


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## Deovin (Mar 5, 2012)

*Just gave it a go with FireFox (v 10.0.2) on my MacBook Pro and it came up in no time.

Chrome (17.0.963.65) and Safari (5.1.2), both on Mac, are still having the issue. 

Will try on the PC and report results when I get a chance.

-----------------------------------

* Scratch the FireFox success. I wasn't logged in and it was the Registration link page with the animated map that came up. Once I logged in and clicked the Gamers Seeking Gamers link the page loaded and loaded until finally showing the 500 status.


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## darjr (Mar 6, 2012)

I've been mucking about in the code for a while and noticed it has stubs for Facebook and other community sites. try logging out of plus/twitter/Facebook and try again.


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## Steve Jung (Mar 6, 2012)

I just tried going to Gamers Seeking Gamers in Safari 5.1.2 on Mac OSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) and it worked for me.


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## El Mahdi (Mar 6, 2012)

darjr said:


> I've been mucking about in the code for a while and noticed it has stubs for Facebook and other community sites. try logging out of plus/twitter/Facebook and try again.




I don't have any plus/twitter/Facebook accounts to log out of. The only online sites I have accounts with is ENWorld and Circvs Maximvs.

Oh, and my Yahoo e-mail.


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## El Mahdi (Mar 6, 2012)

P.S.

I just logged in with my wifes account (Princess P) on both my computer and her iPad.  Her account _can_ access the Gamers Seeking Gamers app with no problem.  I can even see myself on the map from her account, but I can't access Gamers Seeking Gamers from my account.

So, it's not a specific computer thing.  It's not blocking on a specific computer.  It's not router set up, or network blocking.

It's 100% isolated to either account/profile settings, or account authorizations on ENWorld itself.

Any other ideas what that might be...?

In the mean time I'm going to try a line by line comparison of my wife's settings and mine, and see what's different.

The most obvious right now is that my account is a Community Supporter account, and her's isn't.


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## El Mahdi (Mar 7, 2012)

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]

Finished looking at my wife's and mine individual accounts.

Other than my account being a community supporter, having threads I've subscribed to, a few groups I've subscribed to, and having a signature, I didn't find anything significantly different.

I don't see how it could be subscribed threads, or groups - but even if it could, all the groups and most of the thread subscriptions pre-date this problem.

My creation of my signature also predates this problem.

Being a Community Supporter, I can turn off banner adds and such.  I turned them back on for me, but there was no difference (so I turned them back off).  Of course though, that wouldn't have been an issue for  [MENTION=6675497]WarEagleWhoDat[/MENTION] anyways.

It has to be an authorization thing that isn't able to be set by the user.


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## Morrus (Mar 7, 2012)

It's not CS accounts. There are CS accounts on there. It's something else.


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## El Mahdi (Mar 20, 2012)

Any success yet on figuring this out?  (It's been a couple of weeks.  I just tried it and it's still not working.)


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## Morrus (Mar 20, 2012)

El Mahdi said:


> Any success yet on figuring this out? (It's been a couple of weeks. I just tried it and it's still not working.)




Haven't the foggiest. It's stymied me completely.

That said, when we upgrade to the new EN World @darjr is trying to port GsG over (hopefully it can be done or I'll cry). So he might discover something in the code during the process. Or not. Hopefully!


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## El Mahdi (Mar 20, 2012)

Cool!  Thanks.


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## El Mahdi (Aug 3, 2012)

Morrus said:


> Haven't the foggiest. It's stymied me completely.
> 
> That said, when we upgrade to the new EN World @darjr is trying to port GsG over (hopefully it can be done or I'll cry). So he might discover something in the code during the process. Or not. Hopefully!




Has the switch over to the new ENWorld finished yet?  And if it has, is there any word yet on this being fixed?

I just tried it again today, and it's still doing the same thing.

No matter what device I sign onto ENWorld from (my laptop, my home computer, my wifes laptop, my iPhone, or my wife's iPad), I have the same problem.

However, my wife's account can access the Gamers Seeking Gamers page no problem, from all of the same devices.

Is there any progress on this yet...?  I'd really like to be able to use this function as I'm looking to expand my gaming group soon...


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## Deovin (Aug 3, 2012)

I just tried for the first time months. This is the first time I've tried since I got on FIoS. Still no luck.

Chrome, FireFox, Safari, and Opera on Mac OS X.
IE, Chrome, FireFox, Safari, and Opera on Win7.


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## El Mahdi (Aug 23, 2012)

I wanted to give at least a couple of weeks, and wait until after GenCon, to follow up on my earlier post.

So, @darjr , [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] :

Has there been any progress on solving this?


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## El Mahdi (Sep 4, 2012)

@darjr  @Morrus

I don't understand why I can't seem to get an answer on this subject...?

I'm sorry if it seems like only an annoying glitch to those running ENWorld.   But to those who want to use this function, especially as it's an advertised perk of this site, and especially as some of those not being able to access it are paying members, I'd think it would be something that ENWorld would at least actively address, and hopefully try to fix, rather than just ignore it.  Or if a fix is being attempted, that these queries be responded to with at least an "Inwork" and a somewhat regular status update as to what's being done (at least every month or two). 

I've purposely spread out my inquiries here so as to not badger the busy people working for ENWorld.  And also taken into consideration the busyness of GenCon.  But it's been over 5 months since the last update on this (that you all were hoping the server switch over would fix the problem), and this is the third query since then.



Has there been any progress in fixing this problem?


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## Morrus (Sep 4, 2012)

El Mahdi said:


> @darjr @Morrus
> 
> I don't understand why I can't seem to get an answer on this subject...?




Because we don't _know_ the answer!  I promise we're not keeping it secret just to annoy you!


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## El Mahdi (Sep 4, 2012)

Morrus said:


> Because we don't _know_ the answer!  I promise we're not keeping it secret just to annoy you!




I don't feel anyone is keeping it secret or trying to annoy me.  I'm sure there are countless scores of possible reasons why nobody has responded to this in such a while.  I'm just curious as to what the reason(s) is/are, and whether or not anyone has been working on this problem?



Now if nobody is working on it, or if all endeavors to fix this have just been given up, I would find that annoying.


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## IronWolf (Sep 4, 2012)

On a wild stab in the dark - have you tried setting your location to something normal? Like just city and state? Maybe things are getting thrown off by that generating the error?


EDIT: Probably not that - I just set my location to what you had in yours and it still worked for me.  Still - I would go through and see if setting things to blank or simple phrases in your profile made any difference. It seems account related since your wife's works on the same computer, right? 

You could even try creating another account just for testing and see if it works for it. If it does, then it has to be narrowed down to something with your account.


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## El Mahdi (Sep 4, 2012)

Yeah.  I'm pretty sure it's something related to my account, though what it is I have no idea.  I've tried different locations, etc., with no luck.  I made my wife's account for her, and inputted the same information as far as location.  It's an enigma, inside a conundrum...etc. etc.


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## Morrus (Sep 5, 2012)

El Mahdi said:


> I don't feel anyone is keeping it secret or trying to annoy me.  I'm sure there are countless scores of possible reasons why nobody has responded to this in such a while.  I'm just curious as to what the reason(s) is/are, and whether or not anyone has been working on this problem?
> 
> 
> 
> Now if nobody is working on it, or if all endeavors to fix this have just been given up, I would find that annoying.




As we said earlier, we're completely at a loss. We can't think of anywhere else to look. We are bewildered, befuddled, confused, and perplexed. We literally - in the true meaning of the word - have no idea whatsoever what the problem is or what else we can possibly do to look for it. 

We're not unwilling. We're not choosing not to fix it. We can't fix it. We have a reported symptom we can't replicate and can see nothing wrong with the setup or the code.

I honestly don't know what else to say. If we have an epiphany I promise you'll be the very first to know.


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## IronWolf (Sep 5, 2012)

El Mahdi, what is the URL in your browser when you get the 500 error? 

I am assuming darjr checked the Apache error logs, right? A 500 error is something going wrong on the server side. I think the error log for apache might have a bit more information in it, if it hasn't been checked yet.


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## El Mahdi (Sep 5, 2012)

IronWolf said:


> El Mahdi, what is the URL in your browser when you get the 500 error?




http://www.enworld.org/forum/gamersseekinggamers.php







IronWolf said:


> I am assuming darjr checked the Apache error logs, right?




I have no idea. I don't even know what that is...



IronWolf said:


> A 500 error is something going wrong on the server side. I think the error log for apache might have a bit more information in it, if it hasn't been checked yet.




I don't know if they have or not.


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## darjr (Sep 5, 2012)

I'm able to recreate this. Now to fix it....


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## darjr (Sep 5, 2012)

The error is due to how long it takes to process the locations for a map. The larger the distance you want to see the larger the map and the more it needs to process until the http session is timed out at the server end.

    [MENTION=59506]El Mahdi[/MENTION] I've changed your 'distance' setting to 100 and the gamers page should come up now. It was set to 'Any' or 9999 for the distance and the code has a tight loop that does a swack load of stuff that takes forever when it needs to run for everybody.

I'll come back and clear that up later. It isn't exactly fixed, that might take more than a simple change, but now at least I know what is wrong and how to get some folks back into the page if they can't get there currently.
Please give it a try and let me know if it works.

   [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]


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## Deovin (Sep 5, 2012)

Is there a distance setting somewhere in our profile info or is it only available on the GSG/map page?


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## IronWolf (Sep 5, 2012)

darjr said:


> The error is due to how long it takes to process the locations for a map. The larger the distance you want to see the larger the map and the more it needs to process until the http session is timed out at the server end.
> 
> [MENTION=59506]El Mahdi[/MENTION] I've changed your 'distance' setting to 100 and the gamers page should come up now. It was set to 'Any' or 9999 for the distance and the code has a tight loop that does a swack load of stuff that takes forever when it needs to run for everybody.
> 
> ...




Awesome darjr! I tried to XP, but you know I apparently hand it out to you too often!


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## El Mahdi (Sep 5, 2012)

darjr said:


> Please give it a try and let me know if it works.




Bing, bang, boom!  Works like a Champ!  You're the man darjr!

And [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] , thank you very much for help and patience with this.  I understand just how annoying problems like this can be.  Especially when it's just one little thing set wrong, but requires trying scores of things to find it.

Thank You!


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## darjr (Sep 5, 2012)

WarEagleWhoDat said:


> Is there a distance setting somewhere in our profile info or is it only available on the GSG/map page?




As far as I know it's only in the GSG/map page.


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## Deovin (Sep 5, 2012)

Cool. It's working for me for now. It came up with "Any" in the distance select; set it to 25. I'll play around with it a bit.

Thanks!


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## Morrus (Sep 5, 2012)

darjr said:


> As far as I know it's only in the GSG/map page.




Hmmm.  In that case I think we need to find a way to remove the larger options.


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## Morrus (Sep 5, 2012)

Now that's some irony!  After months of being unable to replicate the problem, now _I_ can't get onto the page!


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## darjr (Sep 5, 2012)

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION], i set it to 25, try it now.


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