The source for this is https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/is-it-me-or-is-discourse-ubuntu-com-flakey-for-you-too/31395/8 mostly, but whole thread.
@tkn started a thread asking if others felt this site was ‘flaky’; then less than 30 minutes later got a PM about another user having trouble on the site too..
Luke [Horwell’s] post on that thread is why I’ve posted this & and now quoting Luke’s look:
Instantly replicated. Went to the site, clicked a random avatar to see their profile card. Image didn’t load, server says no (403):
We don’t use a CDN for Discourse, our uploads all stay together. They’re using an S3 bucket on Amazon (which is a configuration choice). Possibly permissions over on AWS are not set up right. Or maybe they migrated at some point, so it could be that they need to update old objects permissions so they are public.
But then, weirdly, URLs are mostly this:
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/user_avatar/discourse.ubuntu.com/xxxxx/288/8750_2.pngA user has an avatar, but when you click on it to expand their card, the server takes forever to give a response, then comes back with a generic avatar.
Something’s not right with Ubuntu Discourse on the CDN side. If someone knows the infrastructure person, please give them a prod. I don’t know if there’s a ‘global’ set up and it’s simply one bad egg behind the load balancer that sometimes serves missing data.
( Ubuntu MATE’s discourse will be disappear this month, and I didn’t want this research to get lost (where it’s posted may not get archived!). This thread can always be unlisted/removed if not useful. Should Luke or someone wishes to add/change some details here, just ping me and I’ll make this a WIKI so others can edit/amend etc )