Problem hosting instance

Hi, we’re trying to set up a hosted instance but running into problems. When we kick off a test from our hosted server, we get the message “Error submitting url for testing”.

I’m selecting “DRL Location Machine” as the test location, and IE8 as the browser.

Here is the contents of our locations file:

[locations]
1=Test_loc
2=Public_Dulles
3=DRL
default=Test_loc

[Test_loc]
1=IE
2=Test
label=Test Location

[Public_Dulles]
1=WPT_Dulles_IE8
label=“WebPagetest.org - Dulles, VA”

[DRL]
1=IE
label=“DRL Location Machine”

[IE]
browser=IE 8
latency=0
label=“Test Location - IE 8”
browserExe=“C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe”
relayServer=“http://192.168.1.31
;relayKey=DRLKEY
relayLocation=DRL
;key=TestKey123

You shouldn’t use relayServer for a normal install. That is if you want to send the tests to another WebPagetest instance (like the public one for example). Under normal operation the test machines will poll the server.

You also don’t need browserExe. It will load the default IE automatically - that’s there if you need to specify pagetest.exe which is a dedicated app with the browser control (some environments have IE locked down in a way that they can’t be used for testing).

Basically delete everything below “label” and you should be set. You can also delete the test and public information.

Thanks for the speedy response! We’ve now tried as you said but the problem remains.

One thing that might make our install different is that we’re using Microsoft IIS (with PHP) to host the server, not Apache?

Hmm, that shouldn’t matter (I use nginx). Filesystem permissions can be a problem though. The IIS user needs write permissions to the work/jobs directory. If it can’t write the jobs then you will get that message.

Hmm, yes we’ve explored that too but still no success. Is there a logfile that might help us? Do we need to change its verbosity if so?

If you comment out “error_reporting(0)” in common.inc you should get errors in the default php error log. Warning, there will be a lot of errors about non-existent array elements (working on making it run clean but we’re not there yet).

OK, we’re trying a slightly different tack now:

We’ve got an instance hosted on Apache and if we use Dullus as a relay with the default sample locations.ini and the api key you issued us, we get test results.

We now want to create a test agent, which can perform the work instead of Dullus.

How though do we tell the server about the agent? Is it to create a new entry in locations.ini?

The server just needs to have a location configured (like Test_IE in the sample) that matches whatever is configured on the agent. The agent will poll the server using the location name and pick up any work waiting for it.

Thanks for all your help on this, we finally got it working.

One question, if we submit 2 tests at once, do they run concurrently or sequentially?

Thanks,

Carl

They will run sequentially unless you have 2 test agents. The tests all go into a queue for a given location and the agents poll for work from the queue for their location. Each agent can only work on one test at a time but multiple agents can be configured for the same location and work on tests in parallel.