Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org

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Re: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by roho (Bishop) on May 18, 2026 at 02:15 UTC
"Well done" to everyone involved in counteracting the bots and restoring Perlmonk's responsiveness. Your hard work is appreciated. "It's not how hard you work, it's how much you get done."	[reply]
Re: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by syphilis (Archbishop) on May 15, 2026 at 03:09 UTC
If you notice any adverse changes, please post a reply here. When attempting to access a node, I intermittently get: `Error 503 Backend unavailable, connection timeout Backend unavailable, connection timeout Error 54113 Details: cache-wsi-ysbk1060063-WSI 1778814214 2084897532 Varnish cache server` [download] Cheers, Rob	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by Corion (Patriarch) on May 15, 2026 at 05:59 UTC
These errors come when the backend is overloaded. This problem still happens, since now the TCP ports are not exhausted anymore, but the bots are still hitting the site a lot and the caching on Fastlys side is not yet there/set up well enough to give these bots a good answer. We reject them more quickly and now hit 40 requests/s easily, but that does not mean that logged-in users always get a connection to the backend unfortunately.	[reply]
Re^3: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by hippo (Archbishop) on May 15, 2026 at 12:35 UTC
It might also be the case that all the bad bots are "doing a Yahoo" and caching the old DNS for much longer than the TTL and therefore still hitting the origin servers directly. Might be worth asking Pair to restrict access to those (at the firewall level) only from Fastly sources. 🦛	[reply]
Re^2: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on May 15, 2026 at 03:37 UTC
Yes, I'm also seeing the same error quite a lot. For example: `Error 503 Backend unavailable, connection timeout Backend unavailable, connection timeout Error 54113 Details: cache-mel11252-MEL 1778815557 3830543164 Varnish cache server` [download] Update: got this similar one when voting on a node: `Error 503 Resource temporarily unavailable Resource temporarily unavailable Error 54113 Details: cache-mel11279-MEL 1778820406 2833676408 Varnish cache server` [download] Update: another similar one: `Error 503 first byte timeout first byte timeout Error 54113 Details: cache-mel11226-MEL 1778826805 3169835228 Varnish cache server` [download] Further update : Yesterday (May 15) was terrible, lots and lots of timeouts. Today (May 16) has been *much* better, no problems at all. 👁️🍾👍🦟	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by roho (Bishop) on May 15, 2026 at 04:42 UTC
I am seeing the same error message. `Error 503 Resource temporarily unavailable Resource temporarily unavailable Error 54113 Details: cache-pdk-kpdk2140043-PDK 1778819728 1898921539 Varnish cache server` [download] "It's not how hard you work, it's how much you get done."	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by Corion (Patriarch) on May 16, 2026 at 06:55 UTC
Currently accessing the site is (again) hard, because logged-in traffic does not have priority over anonymous traffic. We are looking at ways to tweak the setup so that logged-in users get access to the site.	[reply]
Re^2: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by hippo (Archbishop) on May 17, 2026 at 16:03 UTC
Whatever it was that you did in the last hour or so has had a really beneficial effect. Thanks. 🦛	[reply]
Re^3: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by Corion (Patriarch) on May 17, 2026 at 16:24 UTC
I haven't done anything, but I suspect that either Leo or Olaf hit a config that priorizes logged-in users over anonymous connections. Personally, I'm still reading up on Varnish Configuration Language, but I have a good draft of what I want to use to block more bots at the edge. At least the part that I hoped that Fastly would fix seems to work. We don't exhaust TCP connections on the Pair machine anymore, and Fastly handles all of that.	[reply]
Re^4: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by LanX (Saint) on May 17, 2026 at 17:52 UTC
Re: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by Anonymous Monk on May 19, 2026 at 07:36 UTC
Have you noticed that the CDN is serving up stale pages to Anonymous Monk? When I post a reply it doesn't show up on Newest Nodes or Recent Threads or anywhere else. I can see all the replies via "print w/replies" though. It's kinda crazy. When I reload The cognitive load of generated code right now I either see no replies, or 2 replies (mostly none), but there are currently 5 replies! Can't see that node in Meditations either. PS - Have you considered getting revenge by poisoning the bots?	[reply]
Re^2: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by Corion (Patriarch) on May 19, 2026 at 07:39 UTC
Yes. For Anonymous Monk, all pages are cached for 1 day. This is the easy solution while we look at differentiating anonymous human access from anonymous scrapers. When the dust has settled, I'll be looking at the Fastly API to see how we can invalidate the cache or supply a different result to the cache for the affected nodes in that conversation.	[reply]
Re: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by hippo (Archbishop) on May 19, 2026 at 08:02 UTC
Just in case it has not been noticed - this change appears to have locked out the chatterbot. last hour of cb has been empty since the switch-over. 🦛	[reply]
Re^2: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by Corion (Patriarch) on May 19, 2026 at 08:06 UTC
Yes, that's mildly expected - it also affects `mini-cb60` for example. The reason is that we currently serve cached content to all anonymous GET requests. The solution I see for this is to explicitly allow requests with the `libwww-perl/x.y` User Agent, or create a special URL that is not cached.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by hippo (Archbishop) on May 19, 2026 at 08:35 UTC
Tempting though it is, I would not go making special exceptions for widely-used user agent strings like this. You'll be back to square one in no time. The other option sounds good. I don't know what the chatterbot hits to get the messages but I see no value at all in serving say FullPage Chat with a long cache time. Still cache it to avoid catastrophe but drop the cache duration down to 30 seconds or so. Hopefully that will go some way to solving it. 🦛	[reply]
Re^4: Perlmonks.com and Perlmonks.net now redirect to Perlmonks.org by Corion (Patriarch) on May 19, 2026 at 08:39 UTC