Problems using Beta1

tfh

It seems I'm running in to some problems with this beta. Various users are complaining they are getting errors that the server has "unexpectedly closed the connection"
Also if I do testing through https://www.webpagetest.org/ sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and I also see the closed connection error.
GTMetrix simply won't load my websites at all.
FastOrSlow also gives random succes/fails.
Cloudflare: A huge increase (from 90 to 1000+ 502 errors (can't connect to host)
Disabling http/2 doesn't change this. I've also rebooted the machine the server is running on: Also no difference. The errors remain.
You also can't see anything weird in the access.log: The connections seem to be dropped before they get written to the log.
I hope there is a quick fix or a way to downgrade to the previous version.
URL's to test:
https://www.arnauddeklerk
https://www.file-hunter.com

admin

tfh,
What makes debugging the problem hard is the fact that your server is behind Cloudflare.
We suggest reverting to the old version:
* First stop Abyss web Server
* Edit your abyss.conf file. Search for 2.15 and replace it with 2.14. Save the file.
* Re-install Abyss Web Server X2 2.14.2 over the Beta.
* Restart the server.
The old version is available upon request if you don't have a copy.

tfh

Downgrading has solved the issue. Thanks for the quick help.
I'll wait for an update.

admin

tfh wrote
Downgrading has solved the issue. Thanks for the quick help.
I'll wait for an update.

We'll be reviewing your configuration file and hopefully we'll locate the cause of the problem.
Thank you for your help.

tfh

No problem, you're very welcome. It is the whole idea behind beta testing.
At this moment if I try to visit your forum, I am seeing random error 500's: internal server error.

admin

tfh wrote
No problem, you're very welcome. It is the whole idea behind beta testing.
At this moment if I try to visit your forum, I am seeing random error 500's: internal server error.

Thank you. Error 500s were due to a maintenance task on our databases which took more time than expected. Hopefully all is working normally again right now.

admin

tfh,
Thanks to your quick report and feedback, we were able to locate a bug that have not shown up in all our tests during months.
It is caused by some Windows network drivers delivering spurious change notifications related to established connections. According to the official specifications, we have never experienced or read about such a behavior.
But in the real world, this strange thing happens and Abyss Web Server interpreted those notifications as errors and aborted well established connections before they were even written to.
The bug has been fixed for the Windows versions (the only ones that are affected). We have released new revisions of X1 and X2 Beta 1 for Windows numbered 2.15.11b1.
The macOS and Linux versions are not affected and remain numbered 2.15.10b1.
The download links in the Beta 1 announce at https://aprelium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=877827#877827 have been updated.
Users who have access to the Beta channel of Abyss Web Server X2 for Windows will be able to download the new revision by logging into their customer zone.

tfh

Hi!
Great to hear that you guys have been able to (probably) find the bug. This is a nice example of why beta-testing exists and I am happy that we ran into this issue now and am also really impressed about how fast you helped me out yesterday and how quick you've been able to find a solution.
I'm looking forward to testing the new version.
Regards,
Arnaud

admin

tfh,
We won't say hooray until we get your confirmation that your sites are up and running with the new revision. :)
Anyway, it was a crazy debugging session with a lot of guess work.
What took most of the time was reproducing the issue on one of our test servers. Once done, the error was quickly located and fixed.
Thank you for your detailed report and for all your help.

tfh

Well, Abyss Web Server X2 (v 2.15.11 Beta 1) is installed and the first tests look fine. I will do some more testing, but... the first signs are very good.
Thanks for your support & help!

admin

tfh wrote
Well, Abyss Web Server X2 (v 2.15.11 Beta 1) is installed and the first tests look fine. I will do some more testing, but... the first signs are very good.
Thanks for your support & help!

Thank you for your update about the Beta revision. We did a quick test of your main site and it seem that it got a boost with HTTP/2 multiplexing. :)

tfh

24 hours later and it's still working perfectly. No more problems at all. You've squashed the bug very effectively :)
And indeed, the pages on my website that have a lot of media load noticably faster. Nice work!

admin

tfh,
Thank you for the great feedback about the revision and the HTTP/2 addition.

tfh

Just a quick update:
The new beta version continues to work fine.
I've been getting some responses from Asia, South America & Middle East from where I have quite some visitors that the loading times of the pages with a lot of media (like https://www.file-hunter.com/MSX/ and https://www.file-hunter.com/Arabic/) has decreased quite a bit. So that's great!
On the other hand, I did receive two reports from people that sometimes my server takes a very, very long time to respond. I don't know if this issue has been introduced recently, or if that it has always existed.
I did some testing with webpagetest, and was able to possibly reproduce the issue. Here is a screenshot of the result:

I looks like the SSL handshake sometimes takes a very long time. Any idea what could be causing this?
It's not a huge problem. I think I had to do 25 test before I was able to reproduce it. All the other times it all worked fine:

admin

tfh,
Wonderful feedback as usual. Thank you for taking the time to write it and prepare the screenshots.
By the way, what tool have you used for these reports?
The long SSL handshake could have be caused by a low "maximum simultaneous connections" parameter in "Server Parameters".
Try increasing that value so that more concurrent connections could be made to your server.
We suggest also that you send us your abyss.conf file for review. It could help to see the values of key parameters there.

tfh

As you have requested per e-mail, I've increased the time-out time to 27 seconds so we could see if another long SSL-handshake would indeed be aprox 27 seconds. But, I haven't been able to reproduce the issue, not have I received any new complaints from visitors.
So I have no idea if it was just a glitch, an issue with my servers uplink, or whatever. For now I would say: case closed. But... I will keep the time-out time at 27 seconds just in case :)

admin

tfh,
Thank you for the update about the experiment. We will continue to monitor this possible behavior (which we were unable to reproduce on our test servers.)
If it occurs again on your side, please let us know immediately.
Many thanks for all your help with these tests.