So what went on with the holding page?

[eFestivals]

For the first time in the thread, I don't get what you mean.

 

I chucked a suggestion out there, for which there's no absolute proof at the user's end with which it can be disproven.

 

Even if a person has got their session set nice and early (if that's the way See are doing things), it can *never* guarantee you access to the next part of the process, because that's purely dependent on a server at the other end that's able to accept a next request (and it's clearly not doing so for everyone).

Edited October 5, 2015 by eFestivals

[stuartbert two hats]

Personally I think their load-balancer fucked up because a back end service on one of the webheads serving bookings failed but was not being monitored by a 'keep-alive' on the load-balancer. As such all 3 webheads were advertised as available in DNS although only 2 were actually serving bookings.

Because the load-balancer thought the third webhead was up it directed every third request to it and issued a sticky-session cookie to the client to keep using that server for every page request. Anyone with that cookie was then doomed until either the cookie timed out (which could potentially not be until after sell-out), or the admin spots the problem and clears the sticky-table allowing the client to pick up a new one.

Normally a dead server would get spotted by the load-balancer based upon the keep-alive failing. This is often a simple ping but more efficient systems monitor at Layer 4 such as a URL response or HTTP response code So that a device which is merely switched on doesn't get advertised as able to service bookings. I believe that a service outside the scope of the keep-alive failed before the sale started so every 3rd request got directed to a dead server and issued the cookie of doom.

It then wasnt until the admin spotted the problem that they attempted to fix it, which is when some people reported seeing the server become unavailable as DNS would have stopped directing requests to it. Unfortunately anyone still with the cookie of doom never got the chance to try again as it sold out before the cookie expired or the See admin cleared the sticky table.

This might also go some way to answering why the sale took longer than last year....because for much of it there were only 2 servers servicing bookings.

Just a theory like.....

I like the sound of that one. 

[parsonjack]

I like the sound of that one.

I thank you kindly :-)

[eFestivals]

Just a theory like.....

Much better than many I've seen.

[giantkatestacks]

I miss the IT Crowd.

[stuartbert two hats]

In fact, it's probably what Neil was getting at, but more fleshed out.

[Smeble]

Hmm no idea how any of it works, my iPad was on the page from 8.30, refreshed at 8.59, straight onto holding page.3g connection.

Wife's laptop ( Windows 10 IE) on wired broadband never got a sniff of the website from 8.30 through to after sold out.

Tried my iphone at 9.15, (3G) straight on holding page.

Despite furious refreshing didn't see the ticket page.

Rang friend at 9.20 who wife casually mentioned was trying for tickets( first I knew of this) who got our tickets at 9.30

[parsonjack]

I miss the IT Crowd.

They probably switched it off and back on again to fix it tbh....

[parsonjack]

Hmm no idea how any of it works, my iPad was on the page from 8.30, refreshed at 8.59, straight onto holding page.3g connection.

Wife's laptop ( Windows 10 IE) on wired broadband never got a sniff of the website from 8.30 through to after sold out.

Tried my iphone at 9.15, (3G) straight on holding page.

Despite furious refreshing didn't see the ticket page.

Rang friend at 9.20 who wife casually mentioned was trying for tickets( first I knew of this) who got our tickets at 9.30

If my theory above is correct your wife had the cookie of doom, you were simply unlucky, and your friends had luck shining on them.

[Migraine]

Neil clear a few pms or point me in the direction of your email

[arcade fireman]

Something odd was definitely up. Just seems bizarre that lots of us got the holding page repeatedly while some people absolutely couldn't get through to it except for three or four times in half an hour. Also the variation between browsers also was very strange. 

 

I think the theory about the "cookie of doom" is about right. I would close down and re open my browser if it stopped getting to the page, which worked for a while before it would again seize up. I did this for two of my browsers (Firefox and Safari), however I also had Opera open. Opera wouldn't load the holding page after a few minutes, I periodically tried refreshing it in between other two browsers loading and it still wouldn't. I couldn't be arsed restarting Opera as I was doing that with the other two. 

[Peroni]

Everytime I got the white page... It was preceeded by the holding page looking as if it was going to give me the reg page...its started loading bar progress etc... but then it ended up on the white page. Each time it happened I pressed back then refresh and ended up back on holding. I never got to the blank page straight off.

I also got on my mobile oddly formatted versions of the holding page... no colours etc every now and again.

[eFestivals]

Neil clear a few pms or point me in the direction of your email

webmaster@efestivals.co.uk

[Cheesey]

Personally I think their load-balancer fucked up because a back end service on one of the webheads serving bookings failed but was not being monitored by a 'keep-alive' on the load-balancer. As such all 3 webheads were advertised as available in DNS although only 2 were actually serving bookings.

Because the load-balancer thought the third webhead was up it directed every third request to it and issued a sticky-session cookie to the client to keep using that server for every page request. Anyone with that cookie was then doomed until either the cookie timed out (which could potentially not be until after sell-out), or the admin spots the problem and clears the sticky-table allowing the client to pick up a new one.

Normally a dead server would get spotted by the load-balancer based upon the keep-alive failing. This is often a simple ping but more efficient systems monitor at Layer 4 such as a URL response or HTTP response code So that a device which is merely switched on doesn't get advertised as able to service bookings. I believe that a service outside the scope of the keep-alive failed before the sale started so every 3rd request got directed to a dead server and issued the cookie of doom.

It then wasnt until the admin spotted the problem that they attempted to fix it, which is when some people reported seeing the server become unavailable as DNS would have stopped directing requests to it. Unfortunately anyone still with the cookie of doom never got the chance to try again as it sold out before the cookie expired or the See admin cleared the sticky table.

This might also go some way to answering why the sale took longer than last year....because for much of it there were only 2 servers servicing bookings.

Just a theory like.....

 

I like this one. 

 

However, I sometimes got the holding page and sometimes a blank page or "server not responding" error...

 

Maybe one server was down completely, which would explain some people never seeing the holding page, and then the other two were really struggling, with periods of downtime, or least becoming unresponsive for a minute or so every few minutes (garbage collection perhaps?).

Edited October 5, 2015 by Cheesey

[lazyred]

We had 2 people with 5 devices on 3 different internet connections. 2 of them got the white screen, 2 stayed on the timer page and 1 got a booking page. The other time I got a white screen was 2 years ago and I think See admitted to a server problem that year

[musky]

I like this one. 

 

However, I sometimes got the holding page and sometimes a blank page or "server not responding" error...

 

Maybe one server was down completely, which would explain some people never seeing the holding page, and then the other two were really struggling, with periods of downtime, or least becoming unresponsive for a minute or so every few minutes (garbage collection perhaps?).

Pretty much my experience. I only got the white screen on a 4G connection, and even then a single refresh usually got me straight back onto the holding page. Firefox, Chrome and Safari were all getting the holding page on a wired connection as well, with just the odd time out on Chrome and Safari. All the browsers I was using hung on '1 second' a few times, but never to the extent where all were stuck at the same time.

 

It all seemed fairly random to me.

[midnight]

The cookie of doom!

 

From the non-It savvy perspective, it looked like this:

 

I'd brought up the seetic/glastonbury page the night before, refreshed a few times, all seemed as it should be. Started refreshing again, just a few times, at about 8.45am, all ok.

 

At about 8.57, the paged stopped to refresh whenever I tried. It gave me a white screen with some writing: "Safari cannot connect to the page because the server is not responding."

That was it for the next 30 odd minutes, no matter how many times I refreshed. I had another tab open to look at efestivals for tips, there was a thread with another link posted. I tried that, same effect. I googled in another tab, found another website with a link, same thing happened.

 

The line at the top of my screen page displaying the website address gets highlighted as the browser tries to connect to it, every time it highlighted the first part up to the "see" part of seetickets, and then went no further, just hanging there. Soon after 9.30 someone texted me a Sold Out message, and within seconds of that the seetickets Sold Out message miraculously appeared on my screen.

 

So far so unlucky, as it is all down to luck, isn't it? Well, not quite. Not being IT savvy, I had no idea that closing my browser might have helped me - in fact, I was thinking about rebooting the whole thing for a moment, as this is what I'm always told to do by my IT support at work. ("Have you tried to turn it off and on?"  "Yes, twice."  "Try again."  "Alright, then...."), but I had seen a booking page on Thursday, as I was trying for bus tickets (in vain), and the rest of the network seemed to work fine, and I had had the seetickets page up before 9am, so I thought closing everything down would not be a good idea. 

 

I probably wouldn't have got to a booking page anyway; as I said elsewhere, I haven't seen one for 5 years, despite trying every coach sale, main sale and most re-sales. It makes me grind my teeth in despair when I read all that stuff about resales being easy or easier. Nothing seems easy from where I stand or sit, and I feel like a dead weight in the group I'm trying to book with (although none of them have ever complained  ). But even after 5 years of trying in vain, as booking experiences go, this was the most frustrating experience I've ever had.

 

PS: The automatic spell check had changed "seetic" to "septic". Heh. 

Edited October 5, 2015 by midnight

[midnight]

Second person I've seen saying "hard to believe" - what do you think? We're making it up? Why?

This is not my first rodeo. I know what I'm doing and got the unbelievable blank screen nearly every time.

It does add insult to injury.

 

Yes.

[Zoo Music Girl]

We had 2 people with 5 devices on 3 different internet connections. 2 of them got the white screen, 2 stayed on the timer page and 1 got a booking page. The other time I got a white screen was 2 years ago and I think See admitted to a server problem that year

See that's what I remember too: the white screen in October 2013. Another time I've missed out.

[Untz]

So far so unlucky, as it is all down to luck, isn't it? Well, not quite. Not being IT savvy, I had no idea that closing my browser might have helped me - in fact, I was thinking about rebooting the whole thing for a moment, as this is what I'm always told to do by my IT support at work. ("Have you tried to turn it off and on?"  "Yes, twice."  "Try again."  "Alright, then...."), but I had seen a booking page on Thursday, as I was trying for bus tickets (in vain), and the rest of the network seemed to work fine, and I had had the seetickets page up before 9am, so I thought closing everything down would not be a good idea. 

 

This is the thing. Most people are so desperate for tickets and not thinking fully logically that if you're not full of tech advice then anything that stops the F5 process, regardless of the benefits, is likely to be rejected as a waste of time. It's something you can gain with experience, I guess.

 

And I think people on here find the resales easier because they have a lot of people trying for them. I have never got past the holding page in the three or four years I've tried in the resales. The only time anyone I know has got past it was the time they got me tickets. Then again, at least I've seen the holding page in all the resales whereas in two of those four years I haven't even seen that in the main sale.

Edited October 5, 2015 by Untz

[Zoo Music Girl]

The cookie of doom!

From the non-It savvy perspective, it looked like this:

I'd brought up the seetic/glastonbury page the night before, refreshed a few times, all seemed as it should be. Started refreshing again, just a few times, at about 8.45am, all ok.

At about 8.57, the paged stopped to refresh whenever I tried. It gave me a white screen with some writing: "Safari cannot connect to the page because the server is not responding."

That was it for the next 30 odd minutes, no matter how many times I refreshed. I had another tab open to look at efestivals for tips, there was a thread with another link posted. I tried that, same effect. I googled in another tab, found another website with a link, same thing happened.

The line at the top of my screen page displaying the website address gets highlighted as the browser tries to connect to it, every time it highlighted the first part up to the "see" part of seetickets, and then went no further, just hanging there. Soon after 9.30 someone texted me a Sold Out message, and within seconds of that the seetickets Sold Out message miraculously appeared on my screen.

So far so unlucky, as it is all down to luck, isn't it? Well, not quite. Not being IT savvy, I had no idea that closing my browser might have helped me - in fact, I was thinking about rebooting the whole thing for a moment, as this is what I'm always told to do by my IT support at work. ("Have you tried to turn it off and on?" "Yes, twice." "Try again." "Alright, then...."), but I had seen a booking page on Thursday, as I was trying for bus tickets (in vain), and the rest of the network seemed to work fine, and I had had the seetickets page up before 9am, so I thought closing everything down would not be a good idea.

I probably wouldn't have got to a booking page anyway; as I said elsewhere, I haven't seen one for 5 years, despite trying every coach sale, main sale and most re-sales. It makes me grind my teeth in despair when I read all that stuff about resales being easy or easier. Nothing seems easy from where I stand or sit, and I feel like a dead weight in the group I'm trying to book with (although none of them have ever complained ). But even after 5 years of trying in vain, as booking experiences go, this was the most frustrating experience I've ever had.

PS: The automatic spell check had changed "seetic" to "septic". Heh.

Exactly this. Did you get a ticket via someone else?

[stuartbert two hats]

The cookie of doom!

From the non-It savvy perspective, it looked like this:

I'd brought up the seetic/glastonbury page the night before, refreshed a few times, all seemed as it should be. Started refreshing again, just a few times, at about 8.45am, all ok.

At about 8.57, the paged stopped to refresh whenever I tried. It gave me a white screen with some writing: "Safari cannot connect to the page because the server is not responding."

That was it for the next 30 odd minutes, no matter how many times I refreshed. I had another tab open to look at efestivals for tips, there was a thread with another link posted. I tried that, same effect. I googled in another tab, found another website with a link, same thing happened.

The line at the top of my screen page displaying the website address gets highlighted as the browser tries to connect to it, every time it highlighted the first part up to the "see" part of seetickets, and then went no further, just hanging there. Soon after 9.30 someone texted me a Sold Out message, and within seconds of that the seetickets Sold Out message miraculously appeared on my screen.

So far so unlucky, as it is all down to luck, isn't it? Well, not quite. Not being IT savvy, I had no idea that closing my browser might have helped me - in fact, I was thinking about rebooting the whole thing for a moment, as this is what I'm always told to do by my IT support at work. ("Have you tried to turn it off and on?" "Yes, twice." "Try again." "Alright, then...."), but I had seen a booking page on Thursday, as I was trying for bus tickets (in vain), and the rest of the network seemed to work fine, and I had had the seetickets page up before 9am, so I thought closing everything down would not be a good idea.

I probably wouldn't have got to a booking page anyway; as I said elsewhere, I haven't seen one for 5 years, despite trying every coach sale, main sale and most re-sales. It makes me grind my teeth in despair when I read all that stuff about resales being easy or easier. Nothing seems easy from where I stand or sit, and I feel like a dead weight in the group I'm trying to book with (although none of them have ever complained ). But even after 5 years of trying in vain, as booking experiences go, this was the most frustrating experience I've ever had.

PS: The automatic spell check had changed "seetic" to "septic". Heh.

Closing down your browser probably wouldn't have helped. Not unless you were using some sort of private/incognito (not sure what it's called in Safari) mode. Usually cookies are not deleted when you shut down the browser. That's why if you close down and reopen Safari now, you'll still be logged into Efests.

Looks like we do have a bone-fide tip coming out of this - if you're going to use a single browser, use it in Incognito, so if you have persistent white screen issues then you can try restarting the browser to dislodge 'the cookie of death'.

[Untz]

See that's what I remember too: the white screen in October 2013. Another time I've missed out.

 

That was a horrible, horrible sale. It took a good while, at least 15 minutes, after the sale ended for me to even see the Sold Out page. White page of death throughout otherwise.

[Pbird81]

Closing down your browser probably wouldn't have helped. Not unless you were using some sort of private/incognito (not sure what it's called in Safari) mode. Usually cookies are not deleted when you shut down the browser. That's why if you close down and reopen Safari now, you'll still be logged into Efests.

Looks like we do have a bone-fide tip coming out of this - if you're going to use a single browser, use it in Incognito, so if you have persistent white screen issues then you can try restarting the browser to dislodge 'the cookie of death'.

Aargh, think I closed down my non-incognito window... Will remember that next time...

[midnight]

This is the thing. Most people are so desperate for tickets and not thinking fully logically that if you're not full of tech advice then anything that stops the F5 process, regardless of the benefits, is likely to be rejected as a waste of time. It's something you can gain with experience, I guess.

 

And I think people on here find the resales easier because they have a lot of people trying for them. I have never got past the holding page in the three or four years I've tried in the resales. The only time anyone I know has got past it was the time they got me tickets. Then again, at least I've seen the holding page in all the resales whereas in two of those four years I haven't even seen that in the main sale.

 

I wouldn't even know where logical begins when it comes to IT problems, but rebooting would have cost time as well, that was one of the reasons I dismissed it.

 

Exactly this. Did you get a ticket via someone else?

 

No. I will try the resale, but have never been lucky with that before, so I'm not holding out much hope. I know so many people who missed out, I think it will be over in a flash.

 

Closing down your browser probably wouldn't have helped. Not unless you were using some sort of private/incognito (not sure what it's called in Safari) mode. Usually cookies are not deleted when you shut down the browser. That's why if you close down and reopen Safari now, you'll still be logged into Efests.

Looks like we do have a bone-fide tip coming out of this - if you're going to use a single browser, use it in Incognito, so if you have persistent white screen issues then you can try restarting the browser to dislodge 'the cookie of death'.

 

Thanks, I'll try to give that a go.