Tuesday, January 6, 2009

The Recent Unpleasantness

If you've encountered the recent can't-log-in bug, know that I have fixed it. If you haven't, good!

Technical details follow. I really need to move WordSplay; The service I use now is pretty good, but has one huge drawback: no virtual memory. Most 'real' computers, and many systems like the one I'm renting, provide virtual memory to allow you to fully use the physical memory of the system. It does this by temporarily storing some of the contents of memory to disk when there is no free memory left. This means that even if you are running enough programs to take up all the memory, you can still run more -- it just slows everything down. Without this feature, a system either has to refuse to run new programs or kill off a running program to free up memory for the new one. Either choice is bad.

Recently I made some changes that increase the memory usage of the web server, but forgot to reduce the number of connections that it tries to handle. After that, when activity spiked, there was a chance that memory would run out -- and for some reason the system would decide to pick the database server to kill. I've reduced the connection limit now, so this should stop happening.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello there. I found your site after Hasbro bought the games from Atari and removed them. I really appreciate that you have taken the time and effort and money to create this site.
If it wouldn't be too difficult, or cost anything, I would like to suggest a chat box in the room so people could say Hello or talk smack or whatever.
Thank you for what you do.
Holly

Anonymous said...

Hi Evan,

I've been Boggling on your site for a long time now and suddenly tonight I can't log in. "Server does not recognize log in attempt" or something to that effect. Is the unpleasantness back?

Thanks.

Keri said...

I can't log in tonight either - oh, how sad! Was looking forward to splaying some words. I'll keep an eye on the blog for any updates!

Thanks for all you do --

Keruin

Anonymous said...

Hi Evan,
I hope your law practice is going well. I can't log on? I hope you understand this problem and can fix it really soon. I so look forward to playing. God bless you in all you do. You have certainly enriched my life and you don't even know me. Thank you.
Karen in Chicago

Adam O. said...

Recently I tried registering for WordSplay, but it doesn't seem to be working. I entered my e-mail and password, and a screen shows up displaying: "Status of e-mail: Sending..." And it stays like that indefinitely. A friend of mine (who, incidentally, lives over 1000 miles away from where I am) tried as well, and got the same issue (which means it's probably not just my connection/computer/internet provider causing the problem. Ideas on what's the issue?
Thought I'd let you know. And thanks for your work on this! Even though I haven't been able to play yet, I already appreciate your effort in this!