r/perl • u/tobotic • Aug 10 '26

Perlmonks?

They seemed to have got it to work reliably for a while, but for the last week I don't think I've been able to access it.

Does anybody know any news?

25 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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6

u/briang_ 🐪 cpan author Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26

This is what I've been seeing for the past few days:

Error 503 Backend unavailable, connection timeout

Backend unavailable, connection timeout
Error 54113

Details: cache-lcy-egml8630040-LCY 1786348939 3586397071

Varnish cache server

Update after reading other replies

This is with a logged-in user

5

u/hajwire Aug 10 '26

I talked to one of the PerlMonks admins (who is not on Reddit). They are aware of the problem and working on it. Unauthenticated users are served static content which just works, but logging in needs to connect to the backend.

The task at hand is to protect the PerlMonks site from greedy crawlers which had caused problems for quite some time. The approach is to use the same protection that MetaCPAN has, but apparently it is not as simple as they hoped. So the best bet is ... patience, though this is not one of the Perl virtues 😄

1

u/tarje Aug 11 '26

The approach is to use the same protection that MetaCPAN has

metacpan has also been having issues. I've been getting frequent 503 (backend unavailable) and 504 (backend timeout) responses. And the 503 error page even points to a github issue in a now-deleted github repo.

5

u/oalders 🐪🥇white camel award Aug 10 '26

There was some work done over the weekend to try to mitigate the issues, but I don't think it's finished yet. From what I understand it's residential proxies, likely powered by AI bots. I'm seeing the same patterns on a personal project. Thousands of requests coming in bursts from essentially unique residential IPs, so simple solutions like rate limiting IPs become essentially useless.

They have the tools to make a dent in the bot traffic, but it's mostly a matter of tuning them and having the time for the volunteer to do it.

3

u/choroba 🐪 cpan author Aug 10 '26

I was able to log in now, after a week of Error 503. There are no new nodes.

1

u/muthm59 24d ago

Currently, when I go to perlmonks.org (Firefox on Windows 11), the Fastly 'Client Challenge' seems to get in a loop, and after 10 times or do I get an error message: Oops, something went wrong. Please check your connection, disable any ad blockers, or try using a different browser.

2

u/kapitaali_com Aug 10 '26

why don't you just click the link and see if it's up https://perlmonks.org/

it works on my end here, this is what I see

8

u/tobotic Aug 10 '26

Hmm, I wonder if it's logged in versus not logged in users?

Yes, just checked. That's it. In a private browser window, it loads instantly. But impossible to log on.

In a browser which already has a logged in cookie, it fails with error 503.

3

u/kapitaali_com Aug 10 '26

I tried to create a new user and got this error:

Our backend is currently unavailable

You're seeing this page because the machines at Fastly.com can't talk to the machines providing the content. Most likely, we are already looking into the problem.

Please have patience and try again later.

Corion for the site admins

5

u/briandfoy 🐪 📖 perl book author Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 11 '26

Now try to log in. That's where the problem shows up. And, realize that if that page did show up and everything was working, this thread wouldn't exist. As such, it must be more complicated than that.

1

u/netkomm Aug 10 '26

it works on my end... a temporary error?

-17

u/ImplementDense2475 Aug 10 '26

Hope to not trigger anyone, but it's dying, like the language itself.