Remember when you could just call a guy to fix a server?

Had a weird issue where our main client portal just stopped loading for some users but not others. Figured it was a quick cache thing, maybe an hour. Ended up being a specific conflict between a new security plugin and our old load balancer setup. Took me and two other people almost three full days to trace it, digging through logs from like 2018. We finally had to roll back the plugin and rebuild the rule set from scratch. Anyone else get stuck on a 'simple' fix that ate a whole week?

4 comments

4 Comments

max_brown2mo ago

Logs from 2018? Seriously?

cole5492mo ago

Gotta dig deep for the good stuff sometimes. Archives are a treasure trove if you know where to look. Old logs can show patterns you'd miss with recent data alone. It's not about the date, it's about the full story. People forget that.

brianreed1mo ago

Yeah "old logs can show patterns you'd miss with recent data" is exactly right. I had a similar thing with a database that kept timing out every few months during a specific batch job. Couldn't figure it out until I went back through logs from two years prior and found the same exact error pattern tied to a network switch firmware update that nobody had documented. Once you see the repeat cycle it clicks.

the_sam2mo ago

My old boss had a server that only crashed on Tuesdays. We spent a month checking everything before we found a cleaning crew's vacuum plugged into the same circuit.