New Users Unable to Connect

[Boutros]

This is kind of a broad question, but I'm not sure how best to phrase it.

Since making the switch, I've had a number of people for whom I've created new accounts report that my site simply won't load. There's not much in the way of a common thread, as the sticking points vary. Some have reported getting as far as the login screen, entering their credentials, then just getting a blank screen. Others haven't been able to even get the login page to load. And, confoundingly, some have zipped right through with no issues at all.

Similarly, there's no common thread in terms of OS/browser configuration - I've had people report the same problems on Mac, PC, Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, etc.

I've also noticed that Share links aren't working - people who I've sent them to generally say "yeah, that page didn't load at all - just hung there spinning indefinitely." People who are already Users on my server have had no problem.

Through all of this, I have had no issues logging in from various locations, nor have most existing users.

So, I guess what I'm asking is if there's a troubleshooting regimen you can recommend with new users - is it an issue of them not having updated Flash? Java? Something else I'm missing entirely?

Thanks in advance for any advice anyone can offer.

[shadow.8]

What kind of hardware are you running the server on? What OS? Just from what you are saying, I wonder if the system doesn't have enough resources to deliver a consistent experience. Is this system dedicated to running Music Cabinet or does it run in the background of, say your desktop?

I would suggest giving more memory to Subsonic/Music Cabinet. On Windows, the options for Subsonic are in the tray icon. For Music Cabinet, I think you can give more memory to Postgresql too but I'm not familiar enough with it yet to tell you how.

It could also be a bad install, if it were me, I would re-install the OS and then re-install MusicCabinet but that might not be an option for you.

[Boutros]

Hi shadow.8 - thanks for the feedback.

I'm running Windows 7, on a fairly new (maybe 1.5 years old) Intel Core i5. It is my "home machine", not a dedicated server, but it lives in my two year old's room, so it doesn't get used for anything but SS about 95% of the time. I don't have all the specs handy, as I'm at work right now, but I know I've upped the memory allocation for SS pretty significantly.

I'll routinely have 3 or 4 users connecting and streaming simultaneously without a problem, so it doesn't *seem* like a system resource issue to me. When I've had these new users report problems, there has generally been no other activity on the server at the time, so they were the only ones connecting to it. Nonetheless, I'll see if I can up the memory allocation to SS yet further when I get home tonight. I'd be curious to see if anyone else has advice regarding more memory for Postgresql. I'm also still unclear as to whether there's anything the users need to have running for this to work...

[shadow.8]

Ah, well, a computer like that should run SS/MC easily. Unless you have some ridiculously small amount of ram (512 MB or so) it's definitively not a system resource issue.

I swear I read about giving Postgresql more memory somewhere on these boards but I can't seem to find it now. Hakko would know whether this exists or I'm making it up.

Everything runs within the browser so only flash is needed for the player. Java is just for the server end so I doubt that's an issue. Just a thought, have any of your users tried MiniSub? If your running the latest version (0.7.18) it is included at /minisub. Maybe worth a shot to get more information. Other than that, I'm out of ideas, maybe someone else here has a good suggestion?

[Boutros]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've got 4gb of RAM, so...

Oddly enough, the most recent user to have these issues was just today, and we were eventually able to resolve it, but here's a new one: the username I'd set up for him had capital letters in it (JohnnyDanger) - when he tried to log in accordingly, it got passed over to my server as "johnnydanger" and he then would get bumped back to the login page. This happened repeatedly until I nuked his account and created a new one that was all lowercase.

It's always something...

Thanks again for your feedback.

[shadow.8]

That sounds like a Postgresql database issue to me. In fact, all of these issues could be database issues now that I'm thinking about it. I don't know much about Postgresql so I can't really help there...

[hakko]

Oddly enough, the most recent user to have these issues was just today, and we were eventually able to resolve it, but here's a new one: the username I'd set up for him had capital letters in it (JohnnyDanger) - when he tried to log in accordingly, it got passed over to my server as "johnnydanger" and he then would get bumped back to the login page.

I created a user with mixed upper/lower case letters and logged in via the web interface just to verify. It worked fine when using the correct capitalization. Not when using only lowercase.

"it got passed over to my server" - I've no idea why, does the user use the same name for another service and the browser auto fills it or something? If you set up an account xYz and the user tries to log in as XyZ, it's gonna fail. But if that happens, the problem is on your user's side.

If wrongly sent credentials is the issue, I would troubleshoot it using a tool like wireshark or old fashioned telnet/netcat. Telnet for your users, netcat for you together with them (nc -l 4040 for example). Even for the timeout issues, it's interesting what happens if one of your users tries to telnet to your host:port to see how it behaves.

You could use pgAdmin III to check the status of your database. Connect to the MusicCabinet database and use Tools -> Server Status to check the error log for failures (connection pool exhausted etc, sounds unlikely though). But it's wiser to check that for errors before fiddling with memory settings. I haven't seen anyone post guidelines here on memory tweaking actually.

Your server might have slower response times when no one is using it as it may get swapped out. So it's not necessarily gonna be blazing fast just because no one is using it.

[Boutros]

Thanks hakko - yes, I have multiple users with mixed-case usernames that work fine, so I didn't think that was a global problem. I think this user was having an autofill situation, since "johnnydanger" is a screenname he's used elsewhere.

I'll poke around in pgAdmin when I can get back to my machine and see if that reveals anything. I'm particularly curious about why the Share links basically don't work at all anymore - going to do an unscientific poll via Facebook and see if anyone who doesn't have an account can actually connect to one.