Recently had a few times that I couldn't connect with the server. Using Tor browser or hidemyass service showed it was a proxy thing. After an hour I could get back to the site.

I can't stand in for the security of my setup at home; yesterday at work it occurred again (so far my procrastination :D) and I think chances are slim that it's something caused from here.

I'm having this hypothesis that the IP gets blocked for an hour after an x amount of connections?

This have happend with a number of botbers recently, i have no idea why, but i think puke7 have been notified!

I have this hypothesis that the IP gets blocked as well.

It happens for me whenever an OHB's submission period ends and the js auto-refreshes the page. Maybe some kind of invalid HTTP request gets sent! Or maybe it sends a bunch of invalid HTTP requests in quick succession. These are all just wild theories though ;(

What's weirdo bizarre is that it affects some folks but not others. I've never suffered any of the symptoms mentioned.

Dunno if browser matters, but I use Chrome.

Yeah, it happened to me during a OHB the other night, totally killed my vibe yo

This is a known issue, but good it's posted here. Yes, it seems to be related to the page refreshing at the end of a countdown. I have no idea what actually triggers it. It could be dreamhost trying to negate DDoS or something. I also am not sure exactly how to work around it.

I took a close look at this cached google page showing an OHB in progress:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lCBRjnkyaWUJ:battleofthebits.com/arena/Entry/Moonkraft_MIX.mp3/13275/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl

Especially this piece of code:

_{<span class="tb1">
nsf in honour of the moon </span>
<span class="t0">
<div style="clear:all;margin:5px 0;"/>
0 entries
</div>
<div style="clear:all;margin:5px 0;"/>
entry period ends<br/>}
<span class="countdown" data-countdown="3498">
58m 18s </div>
<div style="clear:all;margin:5px 0;"/>
results in<br/>
_{<span class="countdown" data-countdown="89898">
1d 58m 18s </div>
</span>
</a>}

I notice that the <span class="countdown" tag where all the countdown action happens, handled by HandleCountdownTimers() is never closed.

I suspect this unclosed span might lie at the heart of these connection problems after refreshing. :P

The Spring Tracks countdown span on the main page is closed properly (as is the countdown on the sidebar of this page). I couldn't find any cached BotB pages of OHBs starting, but I wanna assume it's closed properly there as well.

So it's possible it's pinging the URL every second until the first (or whatever) call returns a page? I guess that could look like an attack to the server!

It's possible! I'm quite surprised the timer still works on that cached page despite the span not being closed at all.

The .js for the refresh seems to be fine, except maybe
if (time==0) which I'd change to if (time===0), because I'm afraid of comparisons in dynamically typed languages not doing what they're supposed to do. When the refresh counter reaches zero, time is turned into a string, namely 'REFRESH', and comparing a string to a variable such as zero might not return false, resulting in the page being refreshed every second.

I tested comparing a string to a variable in js, and it returned false for me, but I imagine all sorts of black magicks might happen when you're referencing a span element that never gets closed.

Both of these proposed fixes are wild guesses though. I'm still a n00b at js and html. :P

Bump! Actually this happened to me again yesterday, and now I actually didn't forget what it said.

And my conclusion is that when I said:

[23:42] <@mr_bus_sottomg> blocked though huh?
[23:42] <duracellbunny> It's what I assume
[23:42] <@mr_bus_sottomg> i wonder if apache is hung up on a process
[23:42] <@mr_bus_sottomg> or maybe it's a php session block
[23:42] <duracellbunny> The errors I get relate to not being able to connect to the server
[23:43] <@mr_bus_sottomg> not connect at all or timeout on response?
[23:43] <duracellbunny> I think it doesn't connect at all

I most likely remembered all of it wrong. ;(

I got a timeout on response error yesterday. (also after trying to reach the site again several times) So there probably isn't an IP block/ban which I've been madly hypothesizing about.

Maybe this problem itself is semi-related to browsers. I'm using Firefox myself, and golgi uses Pale Moon (a fork of Firefox).

I wonder if any Chrome users got affected, unlike Xaser.

thumbs up for trying to get at the core of it :-) Wouldn't ouke be able to find any errors/traces in the server's error log? From there it would be easier to think of the cause.

As for the troubleshooting details: I'm using Firefox (version 28.0 by now). It seems the not-connecting lasts exactly an hour. And I didn't have it during WC9; it's a recent thing. So I think it could be coming into existence after an update on the server on either facilitating systems or botb itself.