"Please try again" busy message should return 503

[Paul Sladen]

(Note, this may already be fixed, but I can't generate it on-demand in a User Agent that displays the HTTP return code).

If Launchpad is working on other stuff, then the user with frequently receive a busy page (I've had five within 20 minutes). This looks like:

  Please try again
  Sorry, there was a problem connecting to the Launchpad server.
  Try reloading this page in a minute or two. If the problem persists, let us know in the #launchpad IRC channel on Freenode.
  Thanks for your patience.

According to RFC2616, Launchpad should either:

  * just hang up the connection, or
  * return "503 Service Unavailable" message, ideally with a "Retry-After: xx" header busy message.

In the latter cause, the User Agent may well do the resubmit for the user anyway and get rid of the error message that the user can do nothing about anyway.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

On Thu, 2009-05-07 at 10:44 +0000, Paul Sladen wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> (Note, this may already be fixed, but I can't generate it on-demand in a
> User Agent that displays the HTTP return code).
>
> If Launchpad is working on other stuff, then the user with frequently
> receive a busy page (I've had five within 20 minutes). This looks like:
>
> Please try again
> Sorry, there was a problem connecting to the Launchpad server.
> Try reloading this page in a minute or two. If the problem persists, let us know in the #launchpad IRC channel on Freenode.
> Thanks for your patience.
>
> According to RFC2616, Launchpad should either:
>
> * just hang up the connection, or
> * return "503 Service Unavailable" message, ideally with a "Retry-After: xx" header busy message.
>
> In the latter cause, the User Agent may well do the resubmit for the
> user anyway and get rid of the error message that the user can do
> nothing about anyway.

A 502 is the appropriate HTTP error code, and that is what has been used
here for as long as I can remember.

--
William Grant