Could not connect to server (Error code: -1)

[Tonyo]

Some of our users have been getting the error "Could not connect to server "Error code: -1" when they try to log into Service Manager via IE11. I have advised them to clear cache, restarted browser, etc., but tis doesn't' seen to resolve the issue.

One of the affected users is able to log into Firefox without any issues.

Can you please advise?

[Gerry]

Is it possible to get a screenshot, that seems like a very odd error, I just done a status check on your instance and everything seems fine, its odd that some of your users can log in and others not, appears on the face of it to be a local issue of some kind.

[Tonyo]

Hi Gerry,

Screen shot attached as requested.

[James Ainsworth]

If other users are successfully connecting using IE11 and this is confined to a small group of users using IE11, it maybe worthwhile looking at the IE browser Extensions and disabling these to see if any of these are causing issues.

[gwynne]

Did anyone find what was causing this? A few of the team here are experiencing it and they are using firefox.

I am getting times for this for log purposes to see if I can see anything but just wondered if there is a reason this happens?

Regards

Gareth

[TrevorKillick]

Hi Gareth

Looking at this the error indicates a network issue, i can replicate this if i log into collaboration and disable my wifi then click on a workspace link i will see the error.

Are you using a wireless connection?

Kind Regards

Trevor Killick

[gwynne]

No sadly these hard networked will check if there was any network blips on our end

[Kelvin]

We have started to see this issue this morning. No other network issues identified but randomly we get this error.

[TrevorKillick]

Hi Gareth, Kelvin

I have raised this again with development to see if there is anything we can do to investigate further and mitigate the issue.

Kind Regards

Trevor Killick

[Gerry]

Kelvin, gwyne and Tonyo,

Thanks for the report, our team have been looking into this today to try and understand what the problem is. We have attempted to re-produce this problem and the only way we can reproduce this is to disconnect the network and force the app to make an API call.

Detailed Description of the Problem

Having done a code review we have narrowed it down to one specific point in the code which will only be invoked whenever the browser attempts to make an API call to our services API endpoint

https://eurapi.hornbill.com/[instance]/some_service

The error code -1 is returned/reported if the browser failed to make a connection to our front end servers. We have checked the logs and we cannot see anything untoward on the server so we need to investigate further.

Unfortunately the browser only returns us an http response code of -1, in the code there is nothing else we can get at the code level, we could see more in the browser console in the network tab (more on that in a moment).

As more than one site has now seen this problem we are assuming there is something wrong our and and need to investigate further.

More Information Required

In order to investigate further can I please ask the following questions?

• How often does this happen?
  
• Once you get the error and do a browser refresh does everything work again?
  
• Does this happen to more than one specific user?
  
• Does it always happen to the same users?
  
• What browsers are being used where you are seeing the error?
  
• [EDIT] can someone who is seeing the problem also provide us with your source IP address so we can track through our logs
  

What would be terribly useful would be to see what is reported in the Network tab of the browser console. Does anyone who is seeing the problem know how to inspect the network tab of the browser console? of if not, is anyone willing to talk to one of our techs so we can guide you through using the browser console so we can experience the error and get a screenshot of the network console errors?

Any information/feedback would be much appreciated.

Gerry

[gwynne]

Hi Gerry

Thanks for the input, I have asked the team to collate the information and hopefully get some feedback by Friday, I have also noticed that it seems to be firefox users having the issue. Any known issues with firefox?

I have asked them to switch to chrome to see if they can replicate.

Regards

Gareth

[gwynne]

just an update this is only effecting our firefox users they are using Firefox 46.0.1 works perfectly on chrome

[Gerry]

Hi Gareth,

Not that we are aware of at least. One of our remote workers (based in Australia) has also seen this error a couple of times so there is definitely something going on but we are not very close at understanding what the cause is just yet. Any feedback you can give us will help, thanks for asking your team to collate the information.

Gerry

[Gerry]

Hi Gareth,

Just an update, our user who has seen this error yesterday was also in Firefox, so it looks like it could be a Firefox specific issue. Would be good if others who have seen the problem could feedback, if it is a firefox specific problem we could at least narrow down the focus and see if we can find a solution.

Gerry

[Tonyo]

Hi Gerry/Gareth,

Unfortunately it's not just Firefox specific, as it affects IE users as well. When it affected our IE11 users, one of those affected switched over to Firefox, and this error didn't recur.

Tony

[Gerry]

Hi Tony,

Ok thanks for the feedback, thats helpful. If you can answer the other questions I posed above that would be helpful also

Gerry