guff

The technical dealies

Knowing where you’re headed is no guarantee a trip will go well. But the drive can still be fun…

For the past 2+ days I’d been unable to reach the WordPress site. Most everything else web-wise was fine, but every attempt at some version of http://wordpress.org/ met with:

412 - Precondition Failed

Now there’s an HTTP error I’ve not run across in a long, long time. In fact, the only time I’d seen it previous to this was years ago during the test of a server package for a company I worked at. So I sort of knew what it meant, but certainly not why I was seeing it now. I chalked it up to hosting problems, or someone playing where they shouldn’t, and decided to wait it out.

So I waited. And I waited. And I checked out a number of blogs. There’s some smart people out there.

Eventually, I noticed a few referer hits at guff from the WordPress support forums. Now that, I thought, is something that shouldn’t happen if a web site is down. So again I tried http://wordpress.org —nothing but the HTTP 412 message. I also hit Codex wiki, where the new WordPress documentation work is going on (I’m doing a little of it, hence the need to, you know, get there), but the same error. Finally I entered the old wiki’s URL for good measure.

Wiki loaded fine. OK, so I could get to the WordPress Wiki, but nothing else. Interesting. In a nerdy, not really all that helpful kind of way, but interesting nonetheless. However, as much as the problem may have intrigued me, there were other things for me to do. So, I went and did them.

Time passed.

When I got back to the computer, I decided to verify if things were funky at least partially from my side. So I pulled up an anonymizer site. If you don’t know, anonymizers hide your IP and whatnot, allowing you to surf in comfort at least somewhat anonymously. I use @nonymouse, mainly because

1. I don’t use anonymizers all that often, so a free one fits the bill.
2. It’s cute. (It does violate one of my netword rules by using @ as an analogue to ‘a’. It’s the at symbol, people. Did you intend to call it atnonymouse?!)
3. It’s usually fast.
4. It doesn’t tend to munge stylesheets like some do.
5. The sponsored ads are not that distracting.

@nonymouse did it’s job, and through it the WordPress site loaded fine. Which was great, because it meant there was nothing seriously wrong with the server. But it did me little good, because with @nonymouse I could only read the site(s). Setting and saving cookies is a necessity for interactive web life these days, but a no-no when using an anonymizer or other redirector utility. Anyway, something was wrong, either from my end, or due to a glitch in the interaction between client and server. I needed to get there directly, but couldn’t. Further digging was required.

Google!

http://www.google.com/search?q=wordpress.org+precondition+failed

Well well, look at that. Someone else mentions receiving a 412 error at the WordPress site. And a little before or about the same time I noticed it. At least I wasn’t crazy. No more than normal. Still, looking into the error helped little; nothing seemed to point to possible causes beyond the server, and for me (now us), it was obviously more than server-side.

Life continued. I read a book (Idlewild by Nick Sagan; a good first novel, and good, fast-paced end of the world SF). I watched parts of the Pro Bowl. I became a black belt in judo.

I’m kidding about that last one.

As I knew would happen, another similarly hobbled WordPress user appeared out there through the ever diligent seeking of Google, this time on the German WordPress forums. With my almost forgotten six semesters of high school Deutsch, I just barely discerned the solution in that case (solution!) was to disable a setting in the firewall software. Which is all well and good, if you haven’t already run the gamut of such things on your own setup. For me, turning the firewall off was an early step in the process. Still, I had my first real lead on what to look at.

At the start I mentioned I’d been unable to access the WordPress site. So there’s no real cliffhanger to this tale. The resolution for me came down to removing the router (a Netgear wireless box) and hooking up the PC directly to the cable modem. This is not a good solution for many reasons, least of which is the router provided excellent shoring up of the home network. But it worked, so I’m not bitching. Yet.

The moral of the story: Nothing changed on the router over the past seven months, so I’ll need to get in touch with the WP folk and let ‘em know something went screwy on their side, possibly a mod-rewrite issue. Hey, Google told me I’m not the only one dealing with this, so they have to listen, right?