Server upgrade this morning

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

This morning, Tuesday, August 20, at about 10am EDT (2pm UTC/GMT), we upgraded our servers.

(Technically, we added a "load balancer" that distributes traffic between multiple front-end web servers. This will enable a variety of speed and stability improvements.)

This did not go as smoothly as we hoped. However, most issues have now been resolved. If you are experiencing a problem please help us by reporting it below. 

Please post an answer below instead of a comment. This will help us keep issues organized.

Thank you for your patience.

Chris and the WikiTree Team

Answer 1

Thank you, Chris, for letting us know what will happen, when it will happen and why.  Much appreciated.

Comments

Thank you for the heads up, Chris!  My trouble is when I go to save a photo as a Primary Photo I receive a message saying "Failed token check; forcing preview".  I have logged out and logged back in to no avail.  I can try again, later, but I don't want to cause anymore problems than you may already have with the upgrade.

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Good idea, some of the services have been slowing down lately. It is great to see you guys getting ahead of the curve.

rsl

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Phyllis, the issue with the primary photo should now be fixed. Can you test it again and post a new reply if there is still a problem?

Answer 2

Thank you for keeping WikiTree top-notch

Answer 3

Thank you for the message and explanation. Unfortunately there was not a warning message beforehand. I got the message after I pressed the full save button on a new profile. The profile and the set up info and one source were maintained, but all of the biography and sources added were lost.

Comments

The warning message went live about 15 minutes before the downtime. If you were on a page longer than the 15 minutes, you likely did not see the message.

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I am sorry to hear that. There is a (very) slight chance if you use the back button in your browser you may see what was lost.

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No luck. Thanks for the idea. The sources won't be too hard to repopulate, just hope I remember my research notes!

Thanks for the suggestion.

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Very likely more than 15 minutes since I was writing the bio. Ah, well. Back to fixing it now.

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Super good news...the draft was hiding and popped up when I selected edit! So, some but not all, better than nothing.

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Great news that the saved draft was available.

Lesson for future scheduled outage events: Post an announcement box on all WikiTree pages for 6 to 8 hours before the planned outage, to get the attention of members may not have seen the G2G announcement(s) and who do not refresh WikiTree pages frequently.

Answer 4

Transparent.

Answer 5

Thank you for keeping wikitree the most responsive genealogy DB.

Answer 6

Many thanks for this information, cheers you guys are legends

Answer 7

I’m trying to do “Set Primary” on an image, and getting back the error “Failed token check; forcing preview.”

I tried logging out and back in again; no luck

Comments

Thanks, Christopher. We are working on this.

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Christopher, this is now fixed. You can try it again.

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Better now; thanks much

Answer 8

Thank you for the information.

I logged out and then in again, and when I look at a profile page there is a "floating" Wikitree bar at the top of the page covering other information / choices.

It is like a spreadsheet 'freeze panes'

Cheers

Comments

You might be using the "Sticky Header" feature of the WikiTree Browser Extension?

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Thank you, John and Jonathan.

If you're not using the Browser Extension, can you describe the bar further? I assume it's not the status message about this server upgrade?

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Seeing the same thing - the whole page header (including the search boxes) floats down. I turned off WT Brower extension and issue was resolved.

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I am experiencing the same and I am using the browser extension. How do I remove the "sticky header"? Do I need to delete the browser extension?

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No, you don't have to remove or disable the whole extension. Just turn off the Sticky Header option under the Global > Style section of the options page:

For the stable version:

chrome-extension://ncjafpiokcjepnnlmgdaphkkjehapbln/options.html

For the preview version:

chrome-extension://ijipjpbjobecdgkkjdfpemcidfdmnkid/options.html

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I'm seeing it too. Using Chrome. I do have BEE loaded. The image is overlaid on the top of most screens. Looks like this:

Might be related to the warning box at the top, which may have temporarily displaced the menu. Hard to tell.

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Yes, the sticky header feature requires a fixed height and is not expecting random banners to be added above it, so it pushes the menu and other stuff down.

If the banner were added to the content area, it would not have caused this particular issue, but any unexpected content like that can interfere with various features of the extension.

It is not related to BEE, but WBE.

Answer 9

Cannot now change last name at birth on profile Unknown-338378 - blocked with message Invalid edit token. 

Comments

Thanks, Elsie. We are working on this.

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Solved this - by closing down Wikitree and logging in again

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Thank you, Elsie!

Answer 10

Challenge Tracker button is still not working. This began last week.

Comments

Thanks, Jean. This is unrelated. I will make sure Ales sees this.

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I tried and challenge tracker button is working. What exactly is not working?

Does this link work for you?

https://plus.wikitree.com/function/WTChallenge/Challenge.htm?UserID=10816946&ProfileID=10819668

Answer 11

Morning Chris, no problems, so far only been here a few minutes.  On Sunday saving profiles was really slow, I walked away came back and all was well.  Thanks for all you and others do to keep WikiTree up and running!

Have a good day!

Julia Wilder Schroeder

Answer 12

I did log myself out and back in.   I have done an update to a profile, merge request and left comments on profiles, no issues now...it was a bumpy road.

Answer 13

> This has not gone as smoothly as we hoped. 

It never does. One issue is that the tree apps are failing with "An unexpected error occurred: API Access disallowed. Refreshing the page might help."  - see eg https://www.wikitree.com/apps/Matheson-3015. Refreshing makes no difference.

Comments

Thanks, Anon. We are working on the Tree Apps/API problem.

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I think we now have this fixed. Can you test it again?

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Working for me now, thanks!

Answer 14

Was just going to change LNAB on https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Spellick-3 when Warning popped up.

Waited 30 minutes and logged back in. Went to change LNAB and got this error: Invalid edit token. Logged out, cleared cache and restarted computer to dump memory.  Logged back in and same error.

Running Firefox 129.0.1 (64bit) on Windows 10 Pro (64 bit)

Comments

Thank you, LJ. Very helpful.

We are now working on this.

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LJ, this should now be fixed. Can you try again?

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BINGO!!!

Thanks Chris.  Take the rest of the day off, tell the boss i said so.

Oh wait, you are the boss.....never mind.

Answer 15

Apps not working. Received the following error message:

"An unexpected error occurred: API access disallowed"

Thank you for all that the team is doing. great work.

Comments

Thank you, David! We are working on this.

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David, I think this is fixed. Can you test it again? You may need to refresh or login again, but maybe not.

Answer 16

Q I was trying to go into the  Tree Apps on profile [[Redmond-1493]] it had given me an error message :An unexpected error occurred: API Access disallowed. WHY????

Comments

Hi Anne. Sorry for the trouble. We are now working on this.

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tyvm Chris for replying so quickly. I know its a BIG Job to update

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Thank you again, Anne. This should now be fixed. Can you test it again? You may need to refresh or login again, but maybe not.

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tyvm Chris that was fast work. Its working very smoothly.

Answer 17

Many thanks for your attention to our WikiTree experience!

Answer 18

Thank you.  No problems so far

Answer 19

the sign is still up top on the site.

Comments

Hi Ramer,

We're going to leave up the notice for a bit longer, but it's now been updated.

Thanks for the private message. I'm really glad you're enjoying WikiTree.

Chris

Answer 20

I was merrily working away on Garner-8451 when I had a problem with my laptop (it selected the whole profile and deleted all my work and I  thought 'never mind, it saves every 30 mins) then I saw it - we're updating out servers... I checked Garner 8451 and it was looking as it did before all my recent changes! Some obvious changes were: I'd identified key people with their Wiki ID numbers. I'd added some extra details to the Biography as well this morning about Snowdrop Cafe and the Chadwicks.

Comments

Hi Terry. I'm sorry if you lost any work. Are you experiencing any problems currently?

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Sorry, a more general comment, I think a longer period of notice like 24 hours and then again at perhaps say 12 or 6 hour intervals if this could be done on a clock - just thinking,  there must be a lot of different time zones involved.

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I thought I'd give it a while.

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I have returned & I think I lost more than I previously thought! I had previously done some descriptive stories which I had then added to today, about my Grandfather and they are no longer there. That's very disappointing as they'll probably not come out so well a second time:¬(