HTTP error: 500 read timeout

Chances are good that the new feature of logging errors with notification and TrackBack pings to the system Activity Log is showing you more HTTP error: 500 read timeout messages from weblogs.com than you would like, and worse yet, when you check weblogs.com it shows that your ping did work, because there it is, right there!

There are two different views of whether or not a ping worked, the pingee’s view and the pinger’s view. When your copy of Movable Type sends an update notification to weblogs.com, as far as weblogs.com is concerned the ping worked when it receives the notification, gets a copy of your page, verifies that it has changed since your last ping, and sends you a reply. It couldn’t care less whether you actually get the reply; if your server has melted into a pool of slag between the time it sent a copy of the page and the time weblogs.com sends its reply, it’s no skin off weblogs.com’s nose.

But as far as your copy of MT is concerned, the ping only succeeds if weblogs.com manages to send back a non-error reply before it gets tired of waiting. The time it’s willing to wait is where you can cut down on the number of (false) error messages you get, but only at the cost of having to sit around watching the “Pinging sites…” page longer when a ping isn’t going through. In {your MT directory}/mt.cfg, you can put in a PingTimeout value (or increase the value if you already have one), so that you have a longer setting than the default 15 seconds, which will cut down on the number of times you are told that a ping failed when it didn’t. Since the same value is used for TrackBack pings, it will also cut down on the number of times that you ping someone’s entry twice because your MT didn’t know that their MT got the ping. The downside is that when a ping isn’t going to go through, you have to wait through that timeout, but since I usually go do something in another tab while MT’s saving an entry anyway, I’m generally happy with

PingTimeout 30

and so far that’s only given me one read timeout error.

20 Comments

Comment by Shannon #
2003-02-19 19:08:24

Psst. You there?

 
Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2003-02-19 21:17:09

Nope, I’m (I’s? I was) still at work. Now I’m home, but you’re probably snug in bed by now.

 
Comment by Xrlq #
2003-07-16 14:16:20

Thanks! I was wondering why MT gave me that message almost every time I pought Weblogs.com.

 
Comment by Tiger #
2003-07-16 15:55:27

thanks for finding it and simplifying the fix well enough that a technoidiot like me could understand it.

 
Comment by viren #
2004-01-28 01:20:38

question:-
1:-
I have already load all file of rileted link in my server but It is avaliable in server but when i am start the my site and click on orderonline(as link) then it display error is pagecannot be
display and below display http500 internal server error

2:-
MY webpages names are small letter in my harddisk when i load this file on server through ftp then all webpages name are show on Capital letter on server

3:-
when i run asp page in my personalweb server in my pc then it display error header error and response object error ’ASP 0156 :80004005’

 
Comment by edith #
2004-02-10 00:14:01

buon giorno ,senta ho dei problemi con il mio pc,non riesco piu a connettermi con dei siti di una certa importanza,mi dice che impossibile stabilire visualizzare pagina,impossibile tovsre server cosa devo fare ? grazie

 
Comment by SRINIVASAN VIJAYARAGHAVAN #
2005-02-08 02:39:20

WHEN I SUBMITTED M Y ”FREELOTTO” GAMME’S PICK,I
RECEIVED THE MESSAGE AS”HTTP ERROR 500.AND I COULD NOT FIX IT SUCCESSFULLY ALL MY EFFERTS

 
Comment by Peenie Wallie #
2005-02-28 14:38:06

Ummm. OK. This sounds simple enough, but, don’t we have to re-run the MTload.cgi after changing this MT.CFG file? Last time I tried this, i got a ”database exitsts” error, and had to drop/recreate my database for it to work. Is there a way around this? Like, is there a MySQL command I could execute against a database in the table to set the ping timeout to 30 seconds?
peeniewallie a_t wispertel.net

Comment by Phil Ringnalda #
2005-02-28 14:54:25