Paul,

I haven't been bale to find what this message means on your documentation sites anywhere, can you help anyway>

23/06/2005 6:46:11 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi failed with a return value of 500

It's the "return value of 500" that I don't get. I have now out of seti work:(

Live long and crunch.

---

Paul
(S@H1 8888)
And proud of it!

Paul, I've been watching you're problem for several days. I wish I could help, But I can't. Sorry

edit. All I can think of involves detach/reattach or reset which causes a loss of data. Hmmmm, Have you tried uninstall/reinstall? That shouldn't cause any loss of data.

I'm not Paul, but do have an answer.

Its the response from the Apache web server and means "Internal server error". The web server sent that in response to the BOINC clients request. Used to be the only message you'd see was "No response from scheduler" when the scheduler was actually broken or down. Which is pretty much what this says.

The request to the scheduler is in sched_request_(project).xml. The reply is in sched_reply_(project).xml, but if its empty you can run a network tracer (line Ethereal to see the actual reply. Thats for a LAN connection thru a network card, won't work with dial-up.

Could be BOINC tried to contact the scheduler when it was down. From the seti@home news:

June 21, 2005
Outage Notice. We will be having an outage tomorrow in order to back up the database. The outage will start at 17:00 UTC and last two to three hours.

The status page shows the scheduler is back up again, so try it again.

Walt

Walt, Paul's been having this problem for days(several).

{removed}

---

Paul,

I haven't been bale to find what this message means on your documentation sites anywhere, can you help anyway>

23/06/2005 6:46:11 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi failed with a return value of 500

It's the "return value of 500" that I don't get. I have now out of seti work:(

I saw that message yesterday in the posts ... and have not had the time to trace it out and figure out where the error code "500" comes in ... but it sure looks like Walt's answer is the right one.

When you look at the list of messages in the Wiki (perhaps this is not obvious) the end of many of the messages contain an error-code. And this is the error code of the function that did not work. So, in the case of many of the messages we get an error code of -113 indicating " Couldn't resolve hostname".

A 404 error is one where the web page is not found, just like what you get in the browser.

Anyway, that is the best answer I have ... just for the record, I seem to be making about 100 edits a day, with 4-5 new pages made ... the depressing thing is, of course, that with 700 pages in the old "system" it is going to take me some small amount of time to move the pages over. The good news is that the old is still available, the bad is that I am not making any changes there ... in another week of so, I will be possibly turning "off" some of the pages as they are too out of date and the material is now in the Wiki ...

---

I'm not Paul, but do have an answer.

Its the response from the Apache web server and means "Internal server error". The web server sent that in response to the BOINC clients request. Used to be the only message you'd see was "No response from scheduler" when the scheduler was actually broken or down. Which is pretty much what this says.

Walt, how are you at writing?

Can you scribble something down about troubleshooting network problems and BOINC?

---

I'm not Paul, but do have an answer.

Its the response from the Apache web server and means "Internal server error". The web server sent that in response to the BOINC clients request. Used to be the only message you'd see was "No response from scheduler" when the scheduler was actually broken or down. Which is pretty much what this says.

Walt, how are you at writing?

Can you scribble something down about troubleshooting network problems and BOINC?

I'm a pretty good writer, but sometimes takes time to get it right. What did you have in mind?

I'm a pretty good writer, but sometimes takes time to get it right. What did you have in mind?

Actually, I don't even care if you are that good of a writer ... I just need network expertise ... Tony is going to try to tease out some of the old messages with the tests and expected responses ...

I started a page that needs expansion ...

If you want to try to add to it on your own I can give you access, or you can put something on "paper" and e-mail it to me and I will Wiki-fy it ...

Matters not to me, I just know my limitations ... and networking is not one of my strengths ... especially for all of the OS we have out there ...

You can see my start.

---

I'm a pretty good writer, but sometimes takes time to get it right. What did you have in mind?

Actually, I don't even care if you are that good of a writer ... I just need network expertise ... Tony is going to try to tease out some of the old messages with the tests and expected responses ...

I started a page that needs expansion ...

If you want to try to add to it on your own I can give you access, or you can put something on "paper" and e-mail it to me and I will Wiki-fy it ...

Matters not to me, I just know my limitations ... and networking is not one of my strengths ... especially for all of the OS we have out there ...

You can see my start.

What about both? Get access so I can fix things, and send "scribbles" that you can format nice. It takes me a while to write things proper like, and fiddling with the formatting puts it beyond the little time I can spend on it.

EDIT: I mean fix the things I write, not to "edit" other peoples

What about both? Get access so I can fix things, and send "scribbles" that you can format nice.

Send me an e-mail, p.d.buck@comcast.net and we will see if we can make something happen ...

---

Paul,

I haven't been bale to find what this message means on your documentation sites anywhere, can you help anyway>

23/06/2005 6:46:11 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi failed with a return value of 500

It's the "return value of 500" that I don't get. I have now out of seti work:(

Live long and crunch.

TGG,

Next time you get one of these, can you send me the sched_reply_* file for the public project?

Thanks in advance.

---

----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley
My Blog

Next time you get one of these, can you send me the sched_reply_* file for the public project?

I don't think these will be of much use, reason being that the files are only written if the reply can be correctly parsed, otherwise it contains the contents of the last successful reply.

That's how it looks here anyways.

To get the 500 error, you would need to either capture the network packets, or intercept the server response. IIRC you may also be able to get it with an <http_debug/> or <sched_op_debug/> debug option.

FWIW, Here's a 500 server reply that I caught some time back. I don't expect the current ones to be much different.

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 13:12:52 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) mod_fastcgi/2.4.0 PHP/4.3.7
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Via: 1.1 Application and Content Networking System Software 5.1.1
Connection: Close

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>500 Internal Server Error</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<H1>Internal Server Error</H1>
The server encountered an internal error or
misconfiguration and was unable to complete
your request
<P>
Please contact the server administrator,
boincadm@ssl.berkeley.edu and inform them of the time the error occurred,
and anything you might have done that may have
caused the error.<P>
More information about this error may be available
in the server error log.<P>
<HR>
<ADDRESS>Apache/1.3.31 Server at setiboincdata.ssl.berkeley.edu Port 80</ADDRESS>
</BODY></HTML>

Paul,

I haven't been bale to find what this message means on your documentation sites anywhere, can you help anyway>

23/06/2005 6:46:11 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi failed with a return value of 500

It's the "return value of 500" that I don't get. I have now out of seti work:(

Live long and crunch.

TGG,

Next time you get one of these, can you send me the sched_reply_* file for the public project?

Thanks in advance.

Rom,

I would, but I have been playing with utilising free proxies for BOINC only and I seem to have found one that works a little more consistently (for now). Every time I do not use a proxy I get the dreaded message "no schedulars responded". I have not see the "..500" response for some time, but others have. FreeLarry is trying to overtake me on Predictor so I might be stopping SETI for a little while while I resist him for as long as I can. If I see it again, it's all yours.

Live long and crunch.

---

Paul
(S@H1 8888)
And proud of it!

Normally what happens the script/program would tell the "sysadmin" that the script or compiled program that was supposed to respond "failed." The reason for failure could be many things, so without knowing what language it was written in would be hard to define the exact problem. Errors trapping did not report additional information to the user, it just failed.. Generally the 500 or 50x errors codes state that it was on the "server" where the failure occured. The Sysadmin is the supposed to go look at logs to see what was reported as the failure.

Some things that could cause this is a web page collects information to deliver to the script or program, for some reason the complete information does not get there. The program can not operate with the information it receives and aborts. In the case of a "proxy" this could be more probable, for some reason the proxy did not deliver all the information for processing. As others do not have the same issue it would tend to point to the users end.

A program or script initialzes improperly, when it receives information and attempts to process it the information cause unpredicatable results. It does not know how to handle the information and exits abnormally..

A program or script needs access to certain libray files to properly process information. For some reason (configuration) it can not find the libraries necessary to perform, it exits abnormally.

Paul,

I haven't been bale to find what this message means on your documentation sites anywhere, can you help anyway>

23/06/2005 6:46:11 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi failed with a return value of 500

It's the "return value of 500" that I don't get. I have now out of seti work:(

Live long and crunch.

---

Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project.

Normally what happens the script/program would tell the "sysadmin" that the script or compiled program that was supposed to respond "failed." ...

Papa,

Can I steal this?

I need/want to add material like this to the Wiki ...

---

Hi Paul,

I would like to help with the wiki.. Watching this page: http://boinc-doc.net/boinc-wiki/index.php?title=Troubleshooting_Network_Problems
I noticed that you mention "tracepath" as a linux traceroute program. This isn't installed by default on some or even many distribution (it isn't on my debian). What is installed is "traceroute".. If you want to, feel free to use this on the wiki...

Current result:

prompt:~$ traceroute setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu
traceroute to klaatu.ssl.berkeley.edu (128.32.18.152), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 ipcop (192.168.0.254) 0.558 ms 0.415 ms 0.384 ms
2 217.0.116.146 (217.0.116.146) 56.500 ms 57.714 ms 59.890 ms
3 217.0.74.26 (217.0.74.26) 55.952 ms 57.427 ms 57.772 ms
4 k-ea1.K.DE.net.DTAG.DE (62.154.55.158) 57.101 ms 57.890 ms 58.165 ms
5 nyc-e5.NYC.US.net.DTAG.DE (62.154.14.53) 142.412 ms 144.076 ms 143.045 ms
6 65.59.192.5 (65.59.192.5) 151.621 ms 152.146 ms 151.182 ms
7 ae-1-52.bbr2.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.68.97.33) 150.640 ms ae-1-54.bbr2.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.68.97.97) 151.013 ms 152.033 ms
8 ae-0-0.bbr2.SanJose1.Level3.net (64.159.1.130) 222.329 ms as-0-0.bbr1.SanJose1.Level3.net (64.159.1.133) 222.241 ms ae-0-0.bbr2.SanJose1.Level3.net (64.159.1.130) 225.829 ms
9 ge-8-2.hsa1.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.68.123.136) 221.804 ms ge-8-0.hsa1.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.68.123.8) 222.257 ms ge-9-0.hsa1.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.68.123.40) 222.487 ms
10 CENIC.hsa1.Level3.net (209.247.159.110) 222.332 ms 222.120 ms 221.911 ms
11 inet-ucb--svl-isp.cenic.net (137.164.24.106) 223.199 ms 223.579 ms 222.387 ms
12 vlan193.inr-201-eva.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.0.74) 223.410 ms 223.216 ms 221.902 ms
13 g1-1.inr-230-spr.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.255.110) 223.456 ms 220.140 ms 222.733 ms
14 * * *

The most important thing in this result are the stars at the end (14 * * *) which mean, that the machine doesn't answer. So there must be a network problem at Berkeley or the machine is offline or failing due to other reasons..

Solution: Look at the Server Status page (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_status.html). If there is something red or orange, wait until it is green again and then retry. If not, keep watching it from time to time. Actually you can't do anything on your own..

---

Look at it now ... see if it looks better ...

If you can think of something better to add there, or elsewhere ... suggest away ... networking is one of the places that I am weak ... so, I am just trying to gather as much as I can and putting it down on "paper" so that others may have some tools ...

Not too long ago, we had a spate of these problems and people were suggesting tests to run and what to do when they passed or failed ...

So, if your favorite test is not there ... there is room to roam ... I mean, it seems such a waste that we told people to run a test and report the results, but the next person that we (as a community) tried to help, we did the same stuff over again ... so, all you network Guru's, lets hear from you!

:)

---

Look at it now ... see if it looks better ...

Yes, it looks much better to me, thanks!

I have another suggestion to add, regarding firewall checking on linux.. I don't know whether someone can understand it and/or use it (my native language is not english and these things are complex), but I post it here.. Again: Use, comment and especially correct it as much as you want to.. Everyone here...

This being said, on we go:

Checking firewall settings on linux:

Linux most often uses iptables for firewall services.

If you see anything containing DROP or REJECTED and adresses of the setiservers [please add the important ones here, paul] in your firewall log (often /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog) your problem is the firewall..


To see all firewall rules, type

iptables -L

If you find anything like
ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere state RELATED,ESTABLISHED
ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere state NEW

in a chain called something like "FORWARD" (if your firewall is not the computer, boinc runs on) or a chain called something like "OUTPUT" (if your firewall runs on the same computer as BOINC, then everything SHOULD be fine..

If it still does not work, try

iptables -F
(WARNING: This disables your firewall completely!)

If BOINC gets connection after executing this command, you should try to find out, how your firewall is configured. SuSe Linux has a configuration tool using yast, other distributions might have something similar.

Also you can try reading http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Iptables_for_newbies , if you understand it, you can configure your firewall yourself.

What you actually need is the following:

Allow incoming packages from the setiservers to pass through to your computer, if they are of the state RELATED or ESTABLISHED,
allow outgoing packages from your computer to pass through to the setiservers, if they are of the state NEW, RELATED or ESTABLISHED,

Since the configuration can be very complex (e.g. there are huge differences between the configuration of an gateway firewall and a firewall on your computer) it is hard to get it pinned down here..

For some distributions I can say regarding the standard configuration:

SuSe should need no changes
Debian should need no changes
ipcop should need no changes

One very important thing: If you configure your firewall, be VERY careful! If you do something wrong you can have your firewall useless!

---

Ok, I mangled what you said, you can take a look at it ... since I still don't have a linux computer, I am going to need some of the linux types to help us with dumps of samples ...

But, you can look to see if it still reads ok ...

Again, anyone have a troubleshooting tip for networks I take what ever you can give me... I can usually fix the English and punctuation and smooth out the working for the first go-round ... so, if English is not your first language I don't mind as I am such a heathen that it is my ownly language (well, if you count FORTRAN ... I have others ...).

Keep 'em coming guys and gals ...

---