SwimFinsSF

The scoop for the record

I figured i’d log what was going on with my blog should someone else hit the problem… The basic problem was a few weeks or a month ago I started getting failures when using ecto to post to my blog. The failures showed up in an ecto error dialog as this:

Parsing Failure!

Could not parse response for “metaWeblog.editPost”. Please check the console log for more information.

Upon inspecting the log I saw this in the console:

500 Internal Server Error

Internal Server Error



The server encountered an internal error or

misconfiguration and was unable to complete

your request.

Please contact the server administrator,

xxx@swimfinssf.com and inform them of the time the error occurred,

and anything you might have done that may have

caused the error.

This stimyed me as the message basically told me nothing about what actually failed… I found a few posts indicating that it might be a file permissions problem on the server so I fixed permissions on every file I could find but that did nothing… I searched and searched and searched and finally thought to look in the server log itself… Server log contained this error

Out of memory!

Callback called exit at mt.cgi line 11.

BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at mt.cgi line 11.

[Fri Jan 6 08:04:04 2006] [error] [client 71.139.13.81] Premature end of script headers: /home/swimfins/swimfinssf.com/mt/mt.cgi

Looking at mt.cgi didn’t tell me anything – that line in the source is the ‘run the blog’ line (i.e. all of MT was run in that line so it didn’t help at all… So then I started googling again. This time I came upon a lone sparse article which indicated that this was caused by the server process running out of memory when trying to access the Berkeley DB databases I was using to store entries. The article indicated that I should switch to MySQL which I did.. and BINGO.. worked like a charm and increased the speed of MT at the same time…

Anyway.. not super interesting but I wanted to post it should some one else start googling after seeing the same errors. Hope it helps someone.

Happy hacking

Lets give this a test

i think I may have FINALLY worked out the server error 500s I was getting every flippin time I tried to post… If this post goes without a hitch then it means that I did. And it means that the server was running out of memory trying to access my entries stored in a berkeley DB database. the solution was to cut it over to a MySQL database. I’ll fill in the rest later (need to go to bed) but it took a lot of poking around to finally figure out what the hell was going on.. uggg.. my kingdom for intuitive error reporting.. jeesh…

A worm

By the way, this bad boy seems to be floating around the net the last few days and its making me crazy… Its a windows worm so it doesn’t really do any damage to me but the mails that are carying it are really distracting cuz they’re the kind of thing someone not paying attention might trigger… So figured i’d send out a quick reminder to NEVER open an attachment from a source you don’t know… Should be obvious to people these days but based on the number of fucking messages i’ve gotten over the past two days with the worm attached it seems someone didn’t get the memo…

Surf safe.. wear a condom! 🙂

Tap tap tap

Is this thing on… testing 1 2 3

Guess so… Haven’t been on here in a while so figured I’d say hey… usual excuse (work and a zillion other things)… But this week Apple’s shut down so i’m being a complete lazy bum and hangin out doing not much… In fact today I’m headed over to Nickel Spa for a massage then I may head over to see Harry Potter on the IMAX… Hope so at least…

So anyway.. whats been keeping me busy?… Well Matt’s surprise birthday party was last weekend – that helped keep me occupied for one of the days last weekend (the previous day I was down in LA for the last day of a work trip…

Lets see.. what else… Oh yea.. I got a new toy at home…. one of these:

Ya know… a QUAD Processor G5 Macintosh with a 30″ display.. Oh my GOD… It is CRAZY cool.. I recommend them to everyone… REALLY FUCKING Fast and this Display is just absurdly big.. I love it… I hadn’t upgraded my mac at home in many years and it was time… And since I was so out dated I decided to go a little nuts…

Anyway… I’m off to my massage now.. but figured I’d check in quickly! 🙂 Have a great day!

We share your Pain

Ok.. now this is pretty damn funny… Seems Microsoft has taken crash / error reporting to the next level… Look here for more details…

Another Cool Geek Tool

In doing my usual blog browsing over lunch I found another cool tool out there thanks to web graphics. Xyle scope is a pretty nifty tool for examining and understanding how Style Sheets fit together on blogs. It allows you to view a site and its associated style sheets and understand what styles apply to what elements. You simply point it at a site and it displays the site on the left side and the styles on the right side. It gives you a bunch of different views into the whole style sheet as well as, when in selection mode, understand what styles are being used to display a given element. MAN I could have used this a few weekends ago when I was dorking around with my styles…