What is a fatal error known only as Beak !? (or less than a dot)

Question

I received an error every couple of days in the store where I worked, one of the users called it “Beak” because she thought it reminded her of one thing:

<.

... which, in the source, looks like this:

<P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><.</B>

"Beak" can be easily undone by bouncing JRun on the ColdFusion server, and that was enough for me when I had direct control over my server, and bouncing did not take a single time and had no special effect on it.

Now I am in the store, where I do not have administrator access to the web server, and, in addition (from a business point of view), the servers at any time make large dollar signs and cannot simply bounce.

My undying curiosity has constantly hindered Google’s inability to search for anything but a random collection of B and P.

But NOW ... Now I have SO ... And SO knows.

I can’t say that this is CF, in fact, I suspect that it is Java in fact ... or IIS ... or space, pushing me with an annoying beak in shape ...

What the hell is a beak, and how do I leave it?

---

Editing the confusion ...

I cannot say that I can make the question much clearer, but I can say that the lack of clarity was mainly a function of the error, and not my lack of inclusion.

The error is not related to the code fragment ... there is no specific line number ... While looking at the log files, he never found a template or templates that were executed before the problem occurred.

Once triggered, an error affects every template requested from the server, this effect is to return this string of letters and nothing else in response to the HTTP request: <P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><B><P><.</B>

Restarting the JRun service makes the problem go away ... restarting the web server (IIS in all cases) or the database server (MSSQL, MySQL and Access) or the server itself (windows, different versions, different hardware) is not required.

Honestly, I did not expect anyone who DOES NOT SEE THIS EXACT ERROR before answering. I appreciate that common sense people have tried, but this is not a web developer mistake (in the traditional sense), and code fragments are probably not needed to identify or resolve them.

I hope this clarifies my lack of information, at least to the extent that it becomes clear why I am asking for additional information.

Answer 1

This will help to see the source code of the page generating this output. What you are describing is not something that is a “mistake” in any program language, but rather the result of a function, or perhaps the expectation that a resource is available when it is sometimes not. Things you can do to solve this problem include gathering information about what causes the problem. Here are some general guidelines to follow when debugging an unknown problem.

• Is the problem intermittent with the same information? If this is the case, then most likely not some explicit line of code is incorrect, but the assumption of some external resource (for example, a database), which, as the developer suggests, will always be available (your code should take into account what the user will experience if database is not available).
• Is it possible to reproduce the problem in another environment (for example, on your workstation)? Sometimes small changes between platforms (Debian vs. Red Hat or even Java 1.6.10 compared to Java 1.6.9) can cause unexpected problems.
• Can I reproduce the problem with other information? Perhaps the problem arises because the developer assumes that some invalid value can never get past some earlier filter and thus never worries about catching invalid values ​​in the function that generates the error, usually these are poorly written web applications because people tend to assume that HTML FORM only allow a specific set of values

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

A strange question, so a strange answer.

a) A smaller dot ("<.") uses a character in the J programming language, which, as far as I know, is not related to the Java underlying ColdFusion. This means (I quote from a course on J performed by Stephen Phillips in Japan

 Monadic case: Returns the next integer less than y Dyadic case: Returns x if x is smaller than y, else y 

b) This exact error is used as a signature by kaht in another forum so that they can learn something about it. The signature link will take you to lessthandot.com , a multi-puzzle programming forum. The forum name was called "Beak".

If you can post the full result of an error, then you have a long way to go to find out what causes it; restarting the CF server is not a permanent solution, as you acknowledge.

Answer 3

Maybe it's a memory leak? This explains the fact that this happens "by accident" and is fixed by restarting JRun.

beak ( <P><B><P><B><P><B><P> ...) can be generated using cferror in your application. You should try changing the error pattern (and creating it if you don't have one) so that it contains only the next line.

 <cfdump var="#cferror#"> 

This is my best guess based on the information you provided. People asked for more information, and I think it’s a mistake to refuse. I can tell you from experience that you will find answers to such problems earlier and more often if you stick to the assumption that you had control.