Internal Errors on Sending of Direct Messages

coletg · 2013-12-11T00:09:49.000Z

We have been seeing numerous “Internal Error” messages for one of our clients when a direct message is sent. It appears that the actual DM sometimes is sent, but we still get the error back. Once the error happens, it seems to recur for that user for every new DM. There’s really no other information to debug off of other than the generic “Internal error” with the corresponding error code 131. This however does not seem to always happen, but intermittently.

Was there a recent change that could have caused this? Or is there something that we can do on our end to prevent this/add more debugging?

Thanks for the help!

pgarvie · 2013-12-11T11:47:00.000Z

We’ve been seeing the same error since at least December 5 2013. The frequency with which this occurs is very intermittent. We filed a ticket back on December 7 2013, but no apparent action has been taken yet:

https://dev.twitter.com/issues/1440

For purposes of debugging, the message being returned is not particularly helpful:

Twitter error: Internal error
500:Something is broken. Please post to the group (https://dev.twitter.com/docs/support) so the Twitter team can investigate.
message - Internal error
code - 131

If there is anything we could do on our end, please let us know.

Thanks.

episod · 2013-12-11T15:24:07.000Z

Thanks for these reports, I’ll ask someone to look deeper.

What percentage of your requests would you say you’re seeing these HTTP 500s? Does retrying the same request resolve the issue? Does the message always appear to send despite the HTTP 500?

pgarvie · 2013-12-11T16:02:00.000Z

Hey Taylor:

The range of percentages are rather dramatic, from less than 5% for a given process to almost 48% for another. And this would be over the same time period covering approximately three hours.
We don’t retry the request so we have no information about that.
The message appears to send, but we don’t really have a way to verify, other than it looks like it send.

Anything else, please let us know, and thanks again.

Paul

episod · 2013-12-11T16:15:18.000Z

Thanks Paul! One more question: from what part of the world are you making requests?

pgarvie · 2013-12-11T16:29:56.000Z

Sure. We’re in Minnesota. The IPs we’re using would be one of:

71.5.110.137
71.5.110.138
71.5.110.139
71.5.110.140
71.5.110.141
71.5.110.142

Thanks!!

Paul

pgarvie · 2013-12-12T02:24:06.000Z

Taylor:

Just a quick update. For the past couple hours (6:00PM to 8:00PM, USCentral), approximately 50% to 65% of the requests have been returning HTTP 500s, across all processes. A more consistent range than earlier today, but still a bit unsettling!

Again, thanks for your help here.

Paul

pgarvie · 2013-12-13T12:16:44.000Z

Interesting. Beginning last night sometime between 10:19PM and 10:20PM, USCentral, the error message changed from what we’ve detailed above to this:

Twitter error: Not authorized to use this endpoint.
403:The request is understood, but it has been refused. An accompanying error message will explain why. This code is used when requests are being denied due to update limits (https://support.twitter.com/articles/15364-about-twitter-limits-update-api-dm-and-following).
message - Not authorized to use this endpoint.
code - 37

It is occurring with approximately the same frequency as the previous code 131 errors. We still can’t tell if the DMs are actually being sent or not.

Anyone have any comments or insight on this?

Thanks~~~~

pgarvie · 2013-12-16T02:12:00.000Z

Hey Taylor:

Quick update. The same error we began to see a couple of days ago when we send a direct message continues:

Twitter error: Not authorized to use this endpoint.
403:The request is understood, but it has been refused. An accompanying error message will explain why. This code is used when requests are being denied due to update limits (https://support.twitter.com/articles/15364-about-twitter-limits-update-api-dm-and-following).
message - Not authorized to use this endpoint.
code - 37

About half the time, the DM is sent without any error message. When we do get the error, it looks like the DM is actually sent about half the time. The other half of the time, we have no idea what’s going on.

Any updates, further news, additional information?

Thanks

JamesCauwelier · 2013-12-16T14:23:59.000Z

I am a colleague of Tyler Cole and can confirm that in our case the error message changed as well to:

“Not authorized to use this endpoint”

@episod: Any progress on this?

vedsurtani · 2013-12-23T09:34:38.000Z

We are getting the same error. From past 3 days, we have got it some 100 times on a few accounts.

pgarvie · 2013-12-23T14:12:48.000Z

An update:

Since approximately midnight last night we no longer are seeing these error messages. The last log entry for one was 12/22/13 at about 11:55PM, USCentral.

Maybe a fix was pushed last night at around 10:00PM, Pacific??

PaulG