views:

287

answers:

2

I recently launched a site on Google App Engine using Python. I'm in Korea, but my client is in California, USA. He and others in his area periodically run into periods of time when they receive this error message instead of the site:

This website is temporarily unavailable, please try again later.

I cannot figure out what is causing this. At first I was getting some errors due to the datastore timing out, but I found a fix for that. Then I thought that it was a problem with a particular area of the site that was taking up a lot of CPU time, but SO helped me there. And in any case with the small amount of traffic this site is receiving there was no danger of going over the quotas, anyways.

When my client is running into this problem (I have not personally experienced it) they get it every time they try to access the site for a period of time. Usually these periods last around 20 minutes and then the site is okay to access again.

My client has experienced this at his work as well as from his home. But at his home he has two computers, a server that is connected directly to a cable modem and then another that is connected through a router. The server has yet to experience this problem but his other computer does experience this problem consistently with someone else's at a different location.

I'm not receiving any errors in the admin console and only two of the paths get occasional warnings about CPU time.

Update

It's been a while (nearly 3 weeks) and the user hasn't reported this problem again. Maybe it was just some temporary issue with GAE's servers in that area (California, USA)? I dunno, but I can't really move forward on this without more clues. Thanks to those who tried to help. If it comes up again I'll come back here.

A: 

Check your logs for error status codes: Go to the logs page, expand the options section, and choose "labels" for the bottom box. Then, enter "status: [45]..". Check the returned results for the responses causing this error, to see what's causing it.

Nick Johnson
Doing so only returned a single request in which there seems to be nothing abnormal. I had to put in the label a bit differently: "status:[45].." (lacking a space after the colon). It wasn't able to parse it otherwise.
donut
A: 

Are they even getting to your site? Could be a weird cache thing, or flaky DNS settings. Set up a time where they hit you and you check the server at the same time. Check a hit from your own browser vs theirs and see if you get all the same hits.

Richard Watson
This only happens in 20 minute periods usually at a time I'm not awake (17 hour time difference between me and them). During these times they cannot get to the site at all, but outside these times everything is fine.
donut