constant gateway timeouts

[Wazoo]

should have a larger staff to deal with these things

one of those things that always should have been, but ... expertise in the subject matter, agreement in philosophies, and not even bringing up the programming knowledge needed - both to figure out what's in place and how to go from there, etc. <g> Recall that this was basically an experiment started at the kitchen table, opened up and offerd to others as a 'cool tool' way back when, and it's just gotten huge ever since <g> I've no doubt that had Julian had the vision that his little "tool" would have grown to the proportions it's at these days, there'd have been a number of things done just a bit different <g>

and experienced no timeouts

This may have nothing to do with anything or pehaps yet another clue ... but yesterday, I had two Gateway Timeouts when trying to post replies right here in these Forums. Absolutely nothing to do with e-mail what so ever. (well, other than being hosted on JT's system, I should say <g>)

[dhanna]

The gateway timeouts occur for me when at http://www.spamcop.net/reportheld?action=heldlog

This usually occurs when the system is under a load and I report more than 6 or 7 held mail at a time. I usually "check all" and quick report, but when I have more than 7 or so, I just select 6 or and 7 and then quick report.

If I do get the gateway timeout, I go back to held mail, at http://www.spamcop.net/reportheld?action=heldlog and sometimes all were reported and sometimes there are a few left, not reported yet.

[StevenUnderwood]

The gateway timeouts occur for me when at http://www.spamcop.net/reportheld?action=heldlog

From my understanding that "page" is located on the west coast servers while the mail messages it is working on are located on the east coast servers. Many things can cause problems in that type of setup, most of which spamcop has no control over.

This is one of the reasons I encourage the use of webmail, which is also located on the east coast servers. As long as you keep your trash messages relatively clean (I keep 2 days which is 500+ messages) I find it quite responsive and simple to report the held mail. I also scan my inbox for false negatives (spam that slipped through the filters) and report/delete it before POPping the good messages to my desktop.

[cats]

This is one of the reasons I encourage the use of webmail, which is also located on the east coast servers.  As long as you keep your trash messages relatively clean (I keep 2 days which is 500+ messages) I find it quite responsive and simple to report the held mail.  I also scan my inbox for false negatives (spam that slipped through the filters) and report/delete it before POPping the good messages to my desktop.

I got 3 consecutive timeouts today in WebMail trying to report spam. Adding insult to the wasted time, SpamCop barraged me with hundreds of messages notifying me that for each submission:

SpamCop encountered errors while saving spam for processing:

SpamCop could not find your spam message in this email: ...

I don't like WebMail to begin with and these kind of antics are not helping.

[StevenUnderwood]

I got 3 consecutive timeouts today in WebMail trying to report spam.

What do these timeouts say exactly. I have never had one and would like to try and help you (and the others) who are experiencing this situation.

Are they the same "gateway timeout" errors that people have reported from the VER page which appear to come from the spamcop application?

Is it a IE type error saying it could not find the host?

What is the exact text of the error? WHat URL are they coming from?

SpamCop encountered errors while saving spam for processing:

SpamCop could not find your spam message in this email:

I receive these once every few days, but never with a timeout error. I know I am going to get them when I hit the Report as spam button and the same messages show up still in the mailbox. I simply select all and report again. I have a filter that I run to remove all of the spamcop quick report confirmations after I have checked them and these go to the bitbucket with the rest.

[Wazoo]

What do these timeouts say exactly. I have never had one

Again, no idea if what I saw a few days back has anything to do with the Topic complaint, but since no one else is offering ... what I recollect is a pretty large font Gateway timeout .. then a couple of paragragh / notes about network errors, see if you're still connected, contact the ISP ... generic stuff, though I still haven't actually determined yet whether this is another one of thse internally generated Windows screens (I'm thinking it is, especially based on the suggestion that there is no connection between 'here' and 'there')

Google'ing for Gateway Timeout issues of course shows that it happens all over the place, even seing the $100 USD a year .mac thing that Apple hosts was down for quite a while recently, and this was the error their users were seeing. Other technical papers get into proxies, dropouts of the ACK and SYNC handshakes, all the usual stuff. Not being privy to the internals of the SpamCop network, no idea on whether any of these things are applicable ..

But, in general, it appears that in most cases it boils down to network traffic in general ... not sure if a few trace-routes would show anything or not, but those results might show something, especially for these few that seem to have a constant issue..??

[cats]

I got 3 consecutive timeouts today in WebMail trying to report spam.

What do these timeouts say exactly. I have never had one and would like to try and help you (and the others) who are experiencing this situation.

Are they the same "gateway timeout" errors that people have reported from the VER page which appear to come from the spamcop application?

Is it a IE type error saying it could not find the host?

What is the exact text of the error? WHat URL are they coming from?

SpamCop encountered errors while saving spam for processing:

SpamCop could not find your spam message in this email:

I receive these once every few days, but never with a timeout error. I know I am going to get them when I hit the Report as spam button and the same messages show up still in the mailbox. I simply select all and report again. I have a filter that I run to remove all of the spamcop quick report confirmations after I have checked them and these go to the bitbucket with the rest.

The message from Safari on a cable modem is:

Could not open the page “http://webmail.spamcop.net/horde/imp/mailbox.php” after trying for 60 seconds.

This indicates that the webmail server is not responding in a timely manner. In general, the problem can be caused by many things in the internet and at both ends, but in my case I'm on the web a couple of hours a day and rarely get this message from other severs. It happens consistently with SpamCop's WebMail when reporting large amounts of spam. The reasonable conclusion is that webmail system is not up to the task and should be fixed. Until that time I am simply not going to report much spam.

Overall slowness of spam reporting is another problem but may be related. Just getting to the point where I click the Report spam button (log on, display message headers, select messages) can take 5 minutes or more, and then must be repeated several times to clear all the spam.

I have followed a few suggestions with no improvement. I wish I had time to tinker with all the settings and find the magic combination. Since it is a pay service, it seems reasonable to expect it to work without too much effort. So, I will just use it for the pre-filtering--which it does well--and let it go at that.

[rdgrimes]

So, I will just use it for the pre-filtering--which it does well--and let it go at that.

I felt the same, reporting is WAY more trouble than it's worth. I bypassed my SPamcop filter a few days ago and switched on the spam filter that Comcast offers me. Much to my surprise, the Comcast filter is more or less just as effective as Spamcop with all blacklists and S.A enabled. So now I'm wondering whether it makes any sense to pay for Spamcop at all, even for the filtering.

The responses here just serve to reinforce what I said about customer service at Spamcop. One is expected to PROVE that there is a problem with the system, and one is ignored until one does prove it. The fact that multiple people report problems seems to bear no weight.

Reporting has always been laborious and painfully slow, nothing has changed.

[Wazoo]

One is expected to PROVE that there is a problem with the system, and one is ignored until one does prove it. The fact that multiple people report problems seems to bear no weight.

Fr starters, I don't even use that side of the house, and for as much typing as I've been doing, I'm a bit baffled by the "ignored" comment.

I haven't aksed for "proof" of anything. As an outside observer, wearing the systems analyst hat, I've been trying to correlate the data provided by some folks that say it works against some folks saying it's broke. There has to be something that hasn't been defined yet to address the differences.

And, sure I'll agree with your "multiple people" remark, but also point to what I just stated ... some have issues, others don't .. and there's "multiples" of both sides of that fence. Now, when I look through these Forums and peruse the newsgroups, the folks with the severe complaints that you and cats are describing don't have the "thousands" of others with the same issues. So, I'm just going with that for some reason, "you" are special, but what makes "you" special hasn't been pinned down yet.

Comcast filter is more or less just as effective as Spamcop with all blacklists and S.A enabled

Strange that those folks would be so efficient at blocking the incoming, yet ignore the issues of all their outgoing.

wondering whether it makes any sense to pay for Spamcop at all, even for the filtering

Definitely your call. It's your money. The filtered e-mail thing was set-up as an option for folks that don't have ISPs that are so "caring" for their customers. I'll state again, I'm not a user of this service, just someone trying to help others out.

[StevenUnderwood]

And while Wazoo has been trying to correlate the data, I have been trying to see what I can do to try and cause the problems on my side. If I can get the problem to occur, I may be able to offer a work around and point JT in a direction for a permanent fix or general guidelines for limits to reporting.

I do not know the exact method the "Report as spam" uses, but email submission has limits on the size of the submission. The same may be occuring here. If we can get that defined, it would be better for all.

I currently use webmail with 10 messages per page. I find I am less likely to miss a valid message if all the messages fit on the screen without having to scan it. That being said, I will raise my screen view to a larger number, but I need to know what that number should be. I just set my webmail to display 100 messages per screen and I will see if it will error tomorrow morning (if I can remember not to report before then).

[rdgrimes]

This is not about webmail reporting, never has been.

[Wazoo]

This is not about webmail reporting, never has been.

Perhaps not directly, but webmail keeps being suggested as part of the issue problem / solution / scenario .. in the description of the cross-country split between the various systems involved in the SpamCop "system"

[StevenUnderwood]

And cats problem specifically is the webmail system.

For completeness, my test this morning with 157 held messages, I was able to report 100 at a time without a timeout. It did take longer than my normal time with only 10 being reported (maybe 15 seconds) so I could see with the setting set higher it might timeout before returning the screen, especially with a slower connection in the first place (I was at work with a T1 connection, home is 1 Mb cable). I would assume (but only JT can confirm) that the process would continue even with the browser timeout, similar to the Trash cleanup process. This would also make sence in the instances where people mention they log back in and the messages are gone (though not every case does that seem to happen).

From cats:

This indicates that the webmail server is not responding in a timely manner. In general, the problem can be caused by many things in the internet and at both ends, but in my case I'm on the web a couple of hours a day and rarely get this message from other severs.

I have not been saying that the problem is with your computer (or I have not been trying to), but I believe it is fixable within the webmail account configuration or internal to spamcop, specifically if you are doing large transactions. The webmail webserver will not respond (resulting in browser timeouts) until the background processes are complete (as is the case when emptying the trash at login).

If people are having problems when reporting via webmail with only a few messages at a time, we will need more information or you will need to work with

JT on the solution.

[Wazoo]

Just some links, definitions, and descriptions of various things, ways, and means that can cause a (Gateway) timeout error ... if you take just a bit of the time it took me to make this collection, you'll note that there are conditions in the Operating System (configurations), various applications / modules, and that's not counting the number of times "general internet traffic" came up ....

I tried to list them in an order of possibilities (?) .. but, I'm going to admit, I'm pretty tird right now ...

http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/230

http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E408.html

http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E504.html

http://www.helpwithpcs.com/courses/html/ht...tatus_codes.htm

504 Gateway Timeout

The upstream server failed to send a request in the time allowed by the server.

http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jns/security/iptab..._conntrack.html

http://www.timo-tasi.org/python/timeoutsocket.py

http://www.fastcgi.com/mod_fastcgi/docs/mod_fastcgi.html

http://www.murraymoffatt.com/software-problem-0002.html

http://mail.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-August/098041.html

http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/articles/network_timeouts

http://www.javaworld.com/jw-09-1999/jw-09-timeout.html

http://www.nogoop.com/product_16.html

idle connection timeout - Most servers timeout connections after a certain interval. When HTTP clients use connection pooling, the fact that the connection was closed is detected when the next request is written to the connection. If it's an idempotent request (like a GET, or PUT) then it can just be retried on a new connection. However, POST cannot be retried (we don't know if it has been processed by the server or not), so the user of the HTTP client will get an error on this POST. The nogoop implementation provides a facility to terminate connections which have been idle for a (configurable) length of time, or alternatively to send a "ping" message before using a connection (if it has been idle for a certain amount of time). This ensures that POST requests will not be affected by the server connection timeout processing.

connection request timeout - A good timeout mechanism has three parts: timeout when establishing the initial connection, setting the TCP timeout on the connection (so that each request is subject to the timeout), and, if connection pooling is used, timeout while waiting for a connection to be available from the pool. The nogoop implementation is the only implementation that supports all of these.

[Wazoo]

and for the more adventursome, this may or may not change the symptoms and experiences along the Gateway Timeout issue. Microsoft Windos, IE 5 and 6 are the "targets" of this KnowledgeBase detail. Maybe it'll help?

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...7&Product=ie600

Catch is, if the "multiple servers" in "multiple locations" are involved, then playing ith the values on "your" system may not do a thing .. but, aditional data I didn't have yesterday ...

[turetzsr]

<snip>

Comcast filter is more or less just as effective as Spamcop with all blacklists and S.A enabled

Strange that those folks would be so efficient at blocking the incoming, yet ignore the issues of all their outgoing.

<snip>

... and my employer's e-mail system is exactly the opposite -- it gleefully delivers all kinds of viagra, penis, sexy, and ejaculation spam to me but won't let me send out LARTs unless I munge the "offensive" words! SpamCop is a godsend!